Deputy President of the Senate, Ovie Omo-Agege, Thursday, said the local government autonomy bills are the biggest challenge to the ongoing review of the 1999 Constitution.  

Omo-Agege disclosed this while speaking to State House Correspondents after meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja. 

The DSP, who dismissed criticisms about the Constitutional Review process being “an exercise in futility” said state Houses of Assembly have failed to vote on the amendment bills on local government autonomy passed and transmitted to them for concurrence.

He, however, said despite the challenge of the governors and their State Houses of Assembly holding back, the National Assembly is optimistic the bills will be passed. 

According to him, “I can tell you that at the National Assembly, we have fulfilled our part of that bargain, what is now left is to get the concurrence of 24 Houses of Assemblies of the states. That is also a Section 9 obligation, but this time, imposed on the State Houses of Assembly. 

“As we speak, my mistake, if I knew this question was going to come up, I probably would have spoken with the Clerk of my committee before walking in here, but I know that notwithstanding the brouhaha over this, the states have been meeting and they’ve been taking positions on most of these bills. 

“I don’t know how many right now, but the bigger challenge we have, frankly, it’s not so much all of the bills, it’s the bill dealing with the local government autonomy, both financial and administration, those are the two critical issues. 

“But there are other bills, most of them have passed, we’ve gotten more than the required number of Houses of Assembly for some of those bills, but what matters to us, which is the priority to us, which is a big priority of Mr. President, is this issue of the local government autonomy and that’s where we’re having challenges and that is because of the position of some of the governors, who believed that they should not be in support of this. 

“The President of the Senate has reached out to some of the governors, most especially through my friend, the governor of Kaduna State, to reach out to his fellow governors. Kaduna for instance, has already voted. Kaduna has voted and has transmitted. Of course, we won one, we lost one”, he said.