By Paul Dada
A bill to upgrade the Lagos State 37 Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs) to full-fledged Local Government Areas (LGAs ) has passed the second the second reading stage at the House of Representatives.
The bill is titled “A Bill for an Act to Alter the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended) to Accommodate the Thirty-Seven (37) Development Area Councils of Lagos State as Full-Fledged Local Government Areas, Increasing the Total Number of Local Government Areas in the Federation to Eight Hundred and Eleven (811), and for Related Matters (HB. 1498),”
If this bill which was sponsored by James Faleke, Babajimi Benson, Enitan Badru, and 19 other lawmakers, is finally passed by the National Assembly and signed into law, the number of LGAs in Nigeria will increase to 811.
It would also make Lagos which currently has 20 recognised LGAs to have more than Kano which has 44 LGAs being the highest in the country.
The Lagos LCDAs were created in 2003 by President Bola Tinubu who was then serving as the Governor of Lagos State. Tinubu had reasoned that Lagos, a state which population had exploded to 13.4 million in the year 2000 to become the world’s sixth megacity and Africa’s foremost hub of regional and international economic activities, deserved far more than the 20 Local Government Areas it was stuck with at the time.
Collaborating with the State House of Assembly, the Tinubu-led administration brought the 37 local councils into existence. But President Olusegun Obasanjo ordered the Lagos State Government to revert to having just 2o LGAs.
The battle switched to the Supreme Court which held that the process leading to the creation of the additional local councils was constitutionally valid but they remained inchoate until the National Assembly took the steps to list them as authentic Local Government Areas. Consequently, Tinubu decided to call them Local Council Development Areas(LCDAs).
