Hon. Linus Abaa Okorie, a House of Representative member representing Ohaozara, Onicha/Ivo Federal Constituency of Ebonyi State, is the Chairman of House Committee on Agricultural Colleges And Institutions. A two-time member of the House and a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain, the lawmaker in this interview with  DAILY INDEPENDET, spoke on the autonomy of Local Governments, the 2017 budget, among other issues. Excerpts:

One of the trending issues in the polity today is the need for autonomy for Local Governments. There is the fear that the call may not receive the needed support in several states. What is your take on this?

Firstly, our constitution is built on a federal structure of three tiers of government, the federal, state and local government. Section 7 guarantees autonomy for local governments. It acknowledges that the law that will govern the local governments shall be as made by the state Houses of Assembly. However, it guarantees that the government at all levels shall be democratically elected.

 I believe that the Legislature, Executive and Judiciary, the three arms of government, should work hand-in-hand and independent of each other for true democracy to thrive. In the National Assembly, especially at the House of Representatives, we are of the view that these critical components of democracy should be independent of each other. The local governments should be autonomous, which only speaks to the intents of the constitution.

As long as the constitution is the supreme law of this country, every Nigerian, irrespective of position, is obligated to ensure that its contents and stipulations are observed and respected. Therefore, I don’t expect any law-abiding citizen of this country to work against local government autonomy as guaranteed by the constitution and as recently supported by the Supreme Court.

What would you say are the features of an autonomous local government system?

One of the vital features is an elected government. In democratic precepts, the administration at that level shall be by election not by appointment, not by secondment, and not by caretakership. As a matter of fact, the Supreme Court recently ruled that any form of caretakership or any form of disruption of elected structures in the local government areas is illegal ,and above all other pronouncements or laws, the position of the Supreme Court on this matter is supreme and overriding.

That is to say, as we speak today, any form of caretaker committee in any state in this country is an ad hoc arrangement which lacks the backing of the constitution. It therefore behooves every governor whose state still operates caretaker committee to expedite actions towards conducting local government elections as a mark of respect to the provisions of the constitution which they sworn to protect and to comply with the decisions of the Supreme Court.

It is our position at the National Assembly that the autonomy for local governments should be engrained in such a way that when people are elected into the local government councils, they should have tenure to be decided by the state House of Assembly to enjoy security of tenure. More importantly, that the financial autonomy expected of local governments is guaranteed. Although the state and local government joint account is a matter of the constitution, the way it is being implemented in most states today is against the stipulations of the constitution.

The position of the constitution on this matter is that the allocation of local governments shall move from the Federal Allocation Account Committee each month  to the states where the states are expected to bring  five percent of its monthly internally generated revenues and add to the allocations and distribute to the councils.

The constitution never said that the governors should receive the allocations and superintend over the way they are deplored and the way they are spent. So, any state that does not allow the local governments to do their own expenditure is going against the provisions of the constitution.

Financial Autonomy for State Houses of Assembly has been a recurring topic in the polity with some commentators arguing that it is impossible to have a true democracy without it . What is the position of the National Assembly on the matter?

It is the position of the National Assembly that the Legislature should be entirely independent of the Executive arm of the government. The Houses of Assembly, because of their very critical roles in the growth and sustenance of democracy, need to be financially independent. If they financially dependent on the Executive such that they have to go cap in hand to the governors for money at every point in time, they cannot properly represent the people whom they are meant to represent.

If they cannot not be responsible for the money budgeted for them, nor receive half of it, if all they do is to wait for the allocations coming to the states for their pays, such Assembly cannot be independent and it cannot act with its own mind, and therefore, it is incapable of protecting the people. My advice is that we should all obey the constitution and help our democracy to grow by ensuring that both the local governments and state Houses of Assembly get financial autonomy, and until we do this, we will keep going back and forth without making any progress.

The state governors are said to be frustrating efforts towards local government autonomy because of their interest in the local government funds. Do you share the same view?

Well, I do not know if it was the reason most governors, historically, have not been enthusiastic about local government autonomy. I would not know if it has to do with their interests in the local government funds. It may probably be because of their own interpretations of the Section 7 of the constitution, which says that the governance and administration of the local governments shall be by the laws as made by the states Houses of assembly. So, because of the misinterpretation of this provisions, many governors since 1999, have come to see local government as an appendage of the state government and therefore, do not see any strong reason or conviction that the local governments should have autonomy.

There is also this argument put forwards by some state chief executives questioning the feasibility of local governments to function independent of the state government given the unavailability of some of the local governments, where many are battling to pay workers’ salaries. Their argument is that if the state government should allow some of these local governments to function with the their federal allocations alone without state support, they will find it difficult to fulfil the purposes for which they were created.

Yet, what I think is overriding, which everybody, the governors, legislators and the general public should do is to obey the constitution and not to twist it. It has made case for local government autonomy and it should be so. My advice is that both the governors and  state Houses of Assembly should endeavour to support autonomy for local governments, it will not in any way diminish their roles in making laws to guide the structure and functions of local governments in their states.

President Buhari recently presented the 2017 budget to the Joint Session of the National Assembly. How soon will the budget be passed to enable Mr. President to commence implementation?

The budget was just presented on December 14. So, it would be unreasonable to start saying this is when the budget will be ready. First of all, all the members of the National Assembly will be presented with copies of the budget, we will study it thoroughly and make other considerations before zeroing on the budget. Ministries, agencies and parastatals will be invited for defence.

And as soon as the National Assembly confirms that what has been proposed is capable of engendering the needed development and growth in the country, the budget will be passed. But don’t forget that the current budget has till May next year to run. That is to say the government is not at any risk at all. But, like I said earlier, the question of when is a question whose answer has not come. But definitely, like Mr. President appealed, the National Assembly will not delay the passage of the budget unduly.

There are fears that the 2017 budget may be padded the way 2016 budget was. Are there anything National Assembly is doing to forestall that?

We are still asking: What is padding? If you know what it is, please you can tell us so that we can see what can be done about it. But, if you are talking about what happened last year, the genuflective comedy that was done by Hon. Abdulmumin Jibrin, for us at the House of Representatives, Jibrin’s action was the ranting of a dying ant. Hon. Jibrin was not acting in the interest of the country, nor that of the House of Representatives. He was the Chairman of our Appropriation Committee, with all the powers and privileges.

He superintended over the passage of the budget and he came out on the television channels to say that what he has done was the best possible and sent text messages to all chairmen and vice chairmen of all the committees, which I am of them telling us that he got a hint that the Executive was coming to challenge what had been done and that we should stand our ground on what had been passed and that already he was going to the press. Latter, it was discovered that he had brought in close to N40 billion through the back door into the budget without recourse to the House nor its principal officers.

When it was discovered by the Presidency and the attention of the House drawn to it, the House bent over to drop that budget that was passed, and set up a committee to harmonise it. After the harmonisation and all the dents and damages he had put into the budget was found out, he turned around and started accusing the leadership of the House of Representatives of budget padding. But unfortunately, may be because of the mood of the nation, some people thought he was saying the truth.

The question is: At what point did he notice the padding? Is it when he passed it? Or, is it when he signed it? For your information, every budget signed both the Chairman of the Appropriation Committee of the Senate and House of Representatives, they must sign every page; all the pages. That was why we said it was a genuflective comedy. As for the 2017 budget, the House will perform its constitutional duties, study it and make amends when and where necessary and pass the budget. Nothing like what Jibrin did will ever be heard in the House again.

The crisis in your  party, the PDP, seems to be worsening by the day with defections and rumours of formation of a new party gaining ground by the day. Do you see your party overcoming its current challenges ahead of 2019?

Definitely. What is happening to PDP was not unexpected. When a behemoth suddenly collapsed, so many parts could break and drop off. But, the important thing is that the heart, which is the strength of that behemoth, must remain intact. And as far as the heart remains intact, that will eventually compensate for the sudden collapse and leakages. So, having lost an election that many people did not see coming actually affected the PDP.

 That explains why the party is shedding weight today. But, even at that, the PDP remains the only party that any ward or locality you go you would not need any questioning to feel its presence and acceptance. Remember that the heart of PDP remains South South and South East. As we speak, judging from the last war, called election in Rivers State, PDP remains a party to beat.

As for 2019, I am very confident that PDP will come out stronger and take its rightful place. This is not necessarily because of what I have described, but because the APC have shown to be unable to manage its own successes. What PDP has handled for 16 good years, the APC is battling with it in one year.

To that extent, we do not even see APC as a challenge in 2019. What we have seen is what is fast becoming a seemingly autocratic and forceful manipulation of democratic processes that is emerging in Nigeria. If we allow democracy to run in this country, PDP will have no party to contest against in 2019.

There is a very big challenge before Mr. President today. That challenge is that he must work hard to convince Nigerians that he is not an autocrat, an overlord and somebody who wants power by all means. What happened in Edo and Rivers states recently showed that this administration is not prepared to adhere to ‘one man, one vote’ principle upon which former President Jonathan ceded victory to Buhari.

 What we are seeing today is that they are gradually killing that democratic ethos and principle which Jonathan and PDP had built, which saw many PDP governors losing elections and upon which Jonathan lost and conceded victory to him (President Buhari), even before election results were announced. The fear we have today is not the fear of APC, or the fear of Mega Party. It is the fear that the powers-that-be is now using all the officials of government to suppress democracy and enthrone autocracy.

One of the strongest politicians of the South East zone and former governor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu, recently defected to the APC with a promise to deliver the zone in 2019. Do you see him fulfilling his promise?

I have every respect for Orji Uzor Kalu as a successful businessman, a successful entrepreneur, a successful socialite and a successful Igbo man. But, I am not aware that he has been a successful politician. Orji Uzor Kalu is one of the few governors who could not manage succession after leaving office as governor for eight years.

Even though under him a governor had emerged, but within a spate of six months, he mismanaged the relationship. I don’t think that such a man, with all due respect to his wonderful achievements in various expects of life, can deliver a whole zone to a political party like APC.

My advice is that he should reserve his strength for businesses where he has demonstrated admirable acumen and capacity.