Pan-Yoruba social political group, Afenifere, has kicked against the granting of autonomy to local government administration in the country in the concluded amendments to the 1999 Constitution by the National Assembly.
It also called on the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega, to resign over his planned creation of additional 30,000 polling units across in the country.
The group reached these conclusions after its meeting held in Akure on Tuesday at the residence of its leader, Chief Reuben Fasaranti.
Briefing journalists, Chairman of Afenifere, Ondo State Chapter, Chief Kurede Duyile, said Afenifere had lost confidence in Jega’s capacity to conduct credible elections in 2015.
“Jega is pursuing a course that will affect the credibility of the next general election if he insists on going ahead with the creation of the additional polling units,” he said.
According to him, the creation of the units was totally adversarial to the interest of the southern part of country, given that over 20,000 of the new units would be located in the north.
“We believe that Jega is acting on this based on uninformed issues. His actions are against the interest of the south of this country,” Duyile said.
On local government autonomy, he said the group had called on the Federal Government to come out clear on the recommendations of the national conference before the report is eroded by actions by the National Assembly.
He noted that the granting of autonomy to local governments was an example, contradicting the position of the confab on local councils.
According to him, the recommendation is for the scrapping of the local government system from the constitution, so that states would be responsible for the creation and administration of local governments.
Source: Punch
