Date: 2018-02-16

Kwara State House of Assembly has formally passed a Bill to give Local Governments Financial Autonomy and other Bills of the Fourth Alteration of the 1999 Constitution to bring the number of the Bills considered and passed on the 1999 Constitution Amendment to 15.

The Bills passed by the House at its Thursday plenary include Fourth Alteration No 5 Bill of 2017 which seeks to abrogate the State Joint Local Government Account and empower each Local Government Council to maintain its own Special Account into which all allocations due to the Local Government Council would be paid from Federation Account.

The House also passed the Fourth Alteration No 6 Bill, 2017 which seeks to strengthen Local Government Administration and Fourth Alteration No 14 Bill of 2017 which seeks to provide for independent candidature in elections.

Another Bill of the 1999 constitution amendment was the Fourth Alteration, No 22 Bill, 2017 which seeks to reflect the establishment and core functions of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps in the constitution.

Speaking after the Committee of whole's consideration of the report of the House Committee on the Ethics, Privileges and Judiciary on Public hearing on the Bills, the Speaker, Dr, Ali Ahmad who presided over the plenary, said the passage reflected the views of the people of the state at the Public Hearing held on Tuesday this week.

It could be recalled that the House had on 13th December 2017 plenary passed eleven other Fourth Alteration Bills on the 1999 constitution.