The
contentious issue of child marriage has attracted comments from all and sundry
and it seems the consensus is that it is absurd. For Hon. Hodewu Suru Avoseh,
who represents Badagry Constituency 2 in the Lagos State House of Assembly, the
proponents of the matter should have their heads examined to know if they are
mentally sound.
Avoseh
also kicked against autonomy for local governments, arguing that local
government chairmen would mis-manage their federal allocations if they are not
supervised by the state governments, adding that the Nigerian constitution
should be re-written totally to make it people-oriented.
The
Chairman, House Committee on Health Services, spoke with Oladipupo Awojobi on these and other issues recently.
There
is an agitation that local governments in Nigeria should be autonomous, in view
of the prevailing circumstances, as a lawmaker would you support such a move
The situation we
found ourselves now is unfortunate, the reason being that people need to know
the source of what they are agitating for. Local governments are creation of
states governments as approved by the constitution, so the Federal Government
has no input in them, so how will they control what they have no input in and
what you didn’t create. Those, who are agitating for local government autonomy
shouldn’t have agitated for that. This problem is coming up because we have
failed ourselves due to the type of government we are running, the type of
government we have. Our failure to adopt true federalism is too bad. Local
government autonomy is not the answer to the problem we are facing in Nigeria
now. True federalism is the agitation we should be making now because once we
have that either to still have state governments or regional governments, then
we will make much progress. We should take more power from the centre to the
states or regions and each region or state would know how to govern itself with
the resources it gets from resource control. It will be absurd and awkward to
remove local governments from the control of the state governments and transfer
it to the National Assembly. Look at my local government in Badagry in Lagos or
the local government in Enugu or in Sokoto for instance, how will people stay
in Abuja and know their problems. We have muddled up everything, which is the
problem we created for ourselves. The agitation should not be for local
governments autonomy, but true for federalism so that more power would be given
to the states or regions. If you remember prior to 2002, when the allocations
were going directly to local governments, many council chairmen spent their
allocations anyhow because there was no immediate supervision. Now, we have the
control of the states on the local governments and it is better, they have not been
able to solve their problems at the Federal level and they are talking about
local governments. What I am saying is not because I am a legislator, but I am
saying it due to what I know. There is no way they could give autonomy to local
governments and ask the states to create local governments, it means creation
of local governments would be taken away form the states.
If
you look at it, one of the issues is that local governments are saying that
state governments abuse allocations meant for the LGs given to them by the
Federal Government. Also, when Lagos State created local governments years
back, they were not approved by the Federal Government, so will you say the
state still has power to create local governments
On the abuse of
allocations, in our own case in Lagos State, it is never done; the refusal of
the National Assembly to approve the creation of 37 additional local
governments gave us problem. We have to share the allocation given for the 20
constitutionally recognized local governments amongst the 20 LGs and 37
LCDAs. Some local governments’ chairmen
are liars, when allocation comes; they have about three indoor meetings on it.
So, what accrue to them and what they announced are different. What they are
trying to say is that if the power given to the state to control them is
removed, they would do whatever they like and how many times will the Federal
Government have the opportunity to go and see what they are doing there in the
local councils.
So,
what would be the implication of the autonomy if it is granted
One, it would be
more abused than we are seeing now since the states houses of assembly would
not have control over the local governments anymore. Despite the control we have over them, there are abuses from the
councils, and now that we want to transfer the control to Abuja, they would be
free to do whatever they like, it would be after their tenure that people would
know what they are doing. My fears are for the civil servants in the local
governments, they don’t know what is involved in local government autonomy.
They would suffer most, before 2002, while they were being paid by the councils
directly, were their salaries paid regularly, that was why the states were
asked to take over and pay teachers’ salaries at source and give to the
teachers, since then the salaries of primary school teachers are being paid
regularly. There are so many things involved so, we should not be deceived that
the agitation is in the best interest of Nigeria or the people. The local
government is the closest to the people of the grassroots, but there are some
things people do not understand and in Nigeria, when there are agitations like
this, people would be lobbied without being told what is really involved.
As I said earlier,
local governments are creations of the state governments, the Federal
Government cannot create councils unless they adjust the constitution for that
purpose and take it away from the states, we will see how that will be possible
without creating more problems in the country.
Another
issue is that States Independent Electoral Commissions (SIECs)would be scrapped
and their functions taken over by the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC)
in the local governments as they say states governments manipulate LG
elections, how do you see that
To me, we are just
creating more problems in the sense that as a person, I am not a believer in
local government autonomy, I am a believer in writing a new constitution that
will be called people’s constitution. Depending on the method we want to adopt,
those of us elected as legislators in the states and federal levels can sit
down and write a new constitution to address our problems. Our problems are not
the issue of local government autonomy or removal of immunity for the president
or governors, our problems lie in the constitution. The constitution we are
operating is not our making, I didn’t have any input, our people did not have
any input in it, what is not your making, our do you amend it. Someone analysed
it that a brand new car that was bought two months ago has an accident today
and you take it a panel beater to work on, after a week, it has another one,
and you take it to the panel beater again. Later, it has another accident and
you still take it for repairs, will the car still continue to have values,
instead of panel beating it, just go and buy a new car to save cost and time
wasting, that is what we are doing with our constitution. That is why I said I
am not a believer in the constitutional amendment, it is better for us to sit
down and write a new constitution. The one we have now would still be in
operation until the new one that we all sit down to formulate comes out so that
we will know the type of government we want if it is going to be parliamentary
or presidential, everyone of us would agree on it, how do we want our
federalism to be, do we want true federalism. The generality of Nigerians know
true federalism is what we want as it would give more powers to the states or
regions. By the time we come up with that, we will know what we really want
about autonomy, immunity clauses and SIECs, but
we have left what we need to do and we are doing what we are not
supposed to do, it is better for us to start doing a new thing instead of
wasting our time.
There
have been agitations about the issue of child marriage as our constitution says
that any married person should be regarded as a woman regardless of the age,
would you support that a child should be married out to a man
The question here
should have been who is a child. A child is someone that cannot decide on his
or her own what is right or wrong, atimes he/she might decide on what is right
based on his/her inexperience and he would make a decision that is totally
wrong. By the time someone is 18 years, he/she is regarded as matured, he/she
can be sued or sue someone to a court of law. If child marriage is allowed, it
means a child of nine years of age can be sued for any act he or she commits,
it means a girl or boy of five years can be sued for his or her offence. So, we
need to think beyond the issue of marriage, when talking about child marriage,
marriage is just one aspect of the act of a child. The senses of those
agitating for it should be tested to see if they are really human beings or can
think on their own or to know if they are fathers/ parents. If child marriage
is allowed, then a man can as well marry his daughter. To me, child marriage is just like apartheid,
it is against humanity, a wife must be matured to understand what is involved
in marriage. Senator Ndume and others were saying we should capture them young,
when they are still sweet, you can see the craziness and madness in it. It is
absurd, an act against humanity, a child that does not understand marriage contract,
you want her to marry. You could see a child of 13, 14 or 15 bulky or huge and
think she can think like an 18 year old, then you are wrong. If you go to our
schools, the percentage of children of 12 to 18 years, who can think properly,
is small. Child marriage is an abuse to the girl child.
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