NIGERIA AND ITS POLITICIANS ARE A CONFUSED LOT - LOCAL GOVERNMENT AUTONOMY:

Local Government autonomy is perverse; and shows that Nigerians and its legislators do not even understand what a Federation is supposed to be. Nigerians want to devolve powers to  the Federating units, the same time they want to remove federating units' powers over local government and return them to the centre.
Local government, in all federations worldwide, is federating units matter and ought not appear in a federal Constitution. Their place, like in the 1960/63 Constitution, is in the federating units' Constitutions.
To grant LGAs autonomy is to place their control under the President at the centre who can, like President Obasanjo did with Prof. Iwu's INEC in 2003, manipulate the election of all Councillors and Chairmen of all the local governments in the federation; thus returning Nigeria to full-scale  blaring unitary state; thus promoting fascism, demagoguery and what have you.

"Knowledge will forever triumph over ignorance;; but it looks  like in Nigeria, the reverse is the case.
"Those who seek to govern must first seek knowledge." James Madison.

May God help us.

Emeka Onyesoh