Osinbajo: I stand for fiscal federalism, stronger states, state police
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by chijioke okoronkwo9 owolabi said that the association was borne out of a vision of some young men eight of them who decided in 1978 to concretise their fledging relationship and dominance of social space into a sustainable institution1 osinbajo made this submission while delivering the 40th anniversary lecture of the association of friends on monday in lagos1 the theme of the lecture is restructuring and the nigerian federation1 he reiterated his stance that good governance was what nigeria needed rather than geographical restructuring1 i have been an advocate both in court and outside of fiscal federalism and stronger state governments1 i have argued in favour of state police for the simple reason that policing is a local function1 you simply cannot effectively police nigeria from abuja only recently i made a point that stronger more autonomous states would effectively eradicate poverty1 so i do not believe that geographical restructuring is an answer to nigerias socio-economic circumstances1 that would only result in greater administrative costs but there can be no doubt that we need deeper fiscal federalism and good governance1 he argued that state governments had enormous constitutional powers which they should harness to better their fortunes1 the vice president said that the supreme court held that states had a constitutional right to create local governments pursuant to section 8 of the constitution1 he said that the creation remained incomplete until the national assembly by resolution amended the existing list of local governments to capture the newly created councils1 osinbajo said further that the apex court ruled also that with respect to federal land the state had exclusive authority to grant authority tofor building or developmental control permits1 vice president prof. yemi osinbajo has restated that he is an advocate of fiscal federalism stronger state governments and state police1 osinbajo said that pursuant to the supreme court ruling lagos state government created by state law local government council development areaslcdas to activate the newly created local government councils until such a time the national assembly would complete the process1 he said that the lagos state government took the challenge which resulted in the state earning more internally generated revenueigr than 30 nigerian states put together1 osinbajo said it was wrong to mix up all the issues of good governance and diversificationof the economy with the argument on corruption1 good governance involves inter alia transparency and prudence in public finance1 it involves social justice investing in the poor jobs for young people which explains our school feeding programme providing a meal per day to over nine million pupils in 25 states today1 our n-power is now employing 500 000 graduates our tradermoni that will be giving microcredit to two million petty traders our conditional cash transfers giving monthly grants to over 400000 of the poorest in nigeria1 the plan is to cover over a million households1 he said that in arguing for good governance nigerias greatest problem was grand corruption1 the vice president described corruption as the unbelievable looting of the treasury by simply making huge cash withdrawals in local and foreign currenciesa travesty which president muhammadu buhari stopped1 according to him the restructuring nigeria needs is the restructuring of governance in such manner as to eliminate corruption and create an enabling environment for growth and investments in infrastructure education nutrition and better sanitation1 earlier in his address alhaji oluropo owolabi said that the topic of the lecture could not have come at a better time1 he said that in recent times restructuring had dominated the nations political discourse hence the choice of the vice president a professor of law for the lecture1 he said further that the supreme court ruled in favour of lagos state government as it struck down many provisions of the law that sought to give the federal government control over local government funding1