ABUJA—THE Governor Nasir El Rufai Committee on True Federalism has submitted its report to the National Working Committee of the ruling All Progressives Congress APC, calling for more devolution of powers to states. Chairman, APC Committee on True Federalism/Gov Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State (L), presenting the committee’s report to the National Chairman of APC, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, at the APC Secretariat in Abuja on Thursday The committee recommended that 10 items be moved from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent List.

The items so recommended to be moved are Foods, Drugs, Poison, Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances; Fingerprints and Identification of Criminal Records; Registration of Business names; Labour; Mines and Minerals, including oil fields, oil mining, geological surveys and natural gas; Police; Prisons; Public Holidays (to be classified as National Public Holidays and State Public Holidays); Railways and; Stamp Duties. Resource control “We have proposed that mining, minerals, oil should go to the states. Then there will be certain constitutional amendments. The Petroleum Act will be amended to show that states can now issue oil mining licences; the Land Use Act, Nigeria Minerals and Mining Act, the Petroleum Profit Tax Act 2007 would all need to be amended.

So, we have proposed amendment that will ensure that minerals, mining and oil are vested in the states except offshore minerals. Independent candidacy ”The committee equally recommended independent candidacy but with a caveat that individuals who intend to stand for elections must not have been a member of any political party at least six months to the elections in which they intend to contest. “We believe that if these amendments are passed by the National Assembly, they will significantly re-balance our federation, devolve more powers to the states, reduce the burden of the Federal Government and make our country work better.

This is something that people have been agitating for a long time and we have taken the reports of all previous constitutional and national conferences and put these before the Nigerian public in 2017 and these are the feedback that we got -10 recommendations – to move from the exclusive legislative list to the concurrent legislative list and we have drafted the bill that will enable that to be passed by the National Assembly and the state houses of assembly,” said el-Rufai. In the 56-page report sighted by Vanguard, the committee also recommended that the current Presidential System of Government with all its limitations be upheld but said the associated twin issues of corruption and high cost of governance be urgently addressed.

Read more at: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2018/01/apc-ctte-restructuring-recommends-resource-control-state-police-others/

Obasanjo letter is really doing the magic