INEC Commissioner Backs Financial Autonomy For State Assemblies

?Prof. Lai Olorode, National Commissioner, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has said that the proposed financial autonomy for state Houses of Assembly will guarantee legislative independence.

Olorode made the disclosure on Saturday in Lagos in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).

The House of Representatives is proposing a bill that will give financial autonomy to state legislatures.

“The bill is very important. It will give room for independent legislature without fear or favour, without actually compromising their stand on issues that pertain to the extension of the frontiers of citizenship.

“The legislature has often been attached to the executive and the legislature can become arm twisted when it knows very well that it will have to go to the executive to seek for approval on what to spend and what it can spend on.

“This limits its capacity and freedom to be truly autonomous and truly independent, especially being independent of the executive branch of government,’’ he said.

Olorode, however, expressed the fear that the legislature might abuse the autonomy.

“The fear I have is that there has to be in-built checks by the civil rights community so that?the autonomy?may not lead to legislative abuse.

Supporting the proposal, ?the Executive Director, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), Malam Auwal Rafsanjani, said “for state legislators to be able to carry out their work, be more accountable and instill some level of financial professionalism and discipline, it must be able to have financial autonomy.''

Rafsanjani said if the state assemblies eventually had financial autonomy, it would strengthen their oversight responsibilities.

According to him, it will detach them from being sycophant and agents of the state governors who undermine the work of the state legislature because the state legislators have to go to them??cap-in-hand.

Also speaking, Mr Unimke Nawa, a former National Publicity Secretary of the Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA), urged the state houses of assembly to see the proposal as an opportunity for them to be independent.

“I think the state assemblies need it so that they will be independent of the executive,’’ Nawa said. (NAN)