The Ondo State Government has proposed the creation of 33 new local council development areas in the state.
The State Commissioner for Information and Orientation, Bamidele Ademola-Olateju, told journalists that the state executive council approved the proposal at its weekly meeting on Thursday.
Ondo State currently has 18 statutory local government areas.
The proposal, if pased into law by the state legislature, will take the number of local councils in Ondo to 51.
The state Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, Charles Titiloye, who joined the information commissioner to brief the journalists, explained how the proposed new LCDAs will operate.
He said they would perform the same functions as the existing 18 local governments in the state.
Mrs. Ademola-Olateju added that the enabling law had been sent to the State House of Assembly for enactment.
Speaking more on the 33 LCDAs, Titiloye said that they would have the same functions and operate side-by-side with the existing 18 LGAs in the state.
He said the approval followed the recommendation of the Committee on LCDAs set up by Governor Rotimi Akeredolu.
The committee was headed by Lanke Odogiyan.
“The procedure for local government creation will not be complete without an enabling law,” he said.
“The Council received today, the proposed Bill for the establishment of the 33 LCDA.
“This proposed Bill was approved by the State Executive Council, and is to be sent to the State House of Assembly for enactment to give necessary legal backing,”
he added.
In 2019, Governor Akeredolu received recommendations for the creation of more local government areas to extend governance to the people.
The government then set up an 11-member committee to work out the modalities for the creation of new LCDA.
The new LCDAs are the product of the Review Committee headed by Odogiyan.
The creation of new LCDAs in the Fourth Republic was pioneered by the Lagos State Government under the administration of Bola Tinubu.
It led the state government into confrontation with then President Olusegun Obasanjo who eventually withheld statutory allocations to LGAs in Lagos.
Obasanjo had insisted that federal revenue can only be allocated to the 774 LGAS listed in the 1999 Constutution.
However, Obasanjo’s successor, the late President Umaru Yar’adua, released the withheld funds to Lagos LGAs and the state has sustained the LCDAS.
Since then, the other South West states of Osun, Oyo, Ogun and Ekiti have created their own local council development areas, even though the National Assembly has refused to amend the constitution to recognise them.
