Former President Olusegun Obasanjo touched some raw nerves in his recent renewal of the campaign for local government autonomy in the country. He decried their loss of independence and attributed the failure to discharge their statutory responsibilities to it. He castigated the states for not allowing monthly financial allocations to councils to reach them. The Federal Account Allocation Committee shares money to federal, state and local governments to run the business of governance. But, through the State/Local Governments Joint-Account, states control funds allocated to councils.
Obasanjo said, “…from what we know, most state governments have incapacitated the councils. They have virtually stolen their money in what they called joint account.” His observation might be right, but his crusade for their autonomy does not sit well within the praxis of federalism. Nigeria is a federation of 36 states and a central government.
The former President is not alone in the campaign. Pursuant to the cause, the National Assembly in 2017 passed a bill accordingly, which the legislature of each state that aligns with it will have to pass a concurrence bill for Local Government Areas in its area of jurisdiction to cease from being appendages of the state. Only nine out of the 36 states of the federation have so far enforced it, namely – Ogun, Bayelsa, Cross River, Bauchi, Kwara, Niger, Plateau, Sokoto and Benue. This means that funds allocated to their LGAs go to them directly.
There are 774 LGAs in the country, enshrined in the 1999 Constitution, and statutorily the third tier of government. However, they are wrongly treated as if they were federating units. They have a raft of statutory functions meant to promote development at the grassroots. However, their origin and the extent to which they have creditably discharged their obligations would continue to provoke debates. Interestingly, the 774 councils were creations of successive military administrations led by northerners: 413 in the North and six councils in Abuja, as against 355 councils in the South.
The bitter truth is: political expediency, rather than being vehicles for service delivery or grassroots development, defined their creation. Since councils are funded monthly from Abuja along with the states, it has, therefore, bred inequality in the distribution of public resources. For instance, Lagos and Kano states were roughly equal in population by 1967 when they were decreed into existence. But in 1991, Jigawa was carved out of Kano. Today, Kano comprises 44 councils, Jigawa 27 councils – making 71 LGAs from the old Kano State, whereas Lagos State still has only 20 councils.
In all federal political entities, municipal councils or counties exist as local authorities that discharge statutory functions; and are only part of the states, regions and territories that are federating units as in Canada, the United States, Germany and Australia, among others. Nigeria is probably the only federation so-called that is unrelenting in its devotion to this rogue contraption in operation. Political deceit and lack of political will to do the right thing conflate to sustain the contradiction of independence of councils in a federal republic contrary to the import of Part II Section 4 (7) of the 1999 Constitution. It states: The House of Assembly of a State shall have power to make laws for the peace or good governance of the State or any part thereof with respect to any matter not included in the Concurrent Legislative List; included in the Concurrent List; or any other matter, which it is empowered to make laws.
Therefore, in recognition of the aberration of the status quo and persistent clamour for reform, the 2014 National Political Conference recommended that they be expunged from the constitution and left as strictly state affairs. More critically, they are to cease being a basis for revenue sharing. Under the envisioned arrangement, they are to operate under each state, which shall have the power to create as many as it wishes. This was how they functioned in the First Republic when the defunct Eastern, Western, Mid-Western and Northern regions constituted the federating units.
Indeed, what LG autonomy means is better appreciated from the prism of primary school teachers. Shortly after the Senate passed a bill to that effect last year, the Nigerian Union of Teachers from each state branch greeted the move with a wave of protests. It was an attempt, they reasoned, to bring back those better-forgotten days when their salaries were owed for between nine and 24 months. Therefore, they advised that payment of teachers’ salaries should be left in the hands of the federal or state governments. In Lagos, one of the teachers’ placards tellingly read, “The days of rooms to let, teachers should not apply, should not be re-enacted.”
That function is now being performed by the states to the relief of teachers. The Federal Government’s takeover of primary healthcare centres in conjunction with the states also epitomises its lack of faith in the system to deliver.
Perhaps, for this reason, a survey in 1998 by the United Nations Development Programme in alliance with States and Local Government Department in the Presidency concluded that many of them lacked the capacity to execute the responsibilities they were saddled with; just as they were too small to be economically viable. Out of 750 LGAs covered by the survey, only 151 of them had planning boards.
Having gradually moved away from the era when council chairmen used funds mainly to illegally acquire property and councillors earned about N900,000 monthly to the envy of university professors, the country should now fashion a grassroots governance template that delivers services as is the case in model federations.
If their funds have been stolen, it is the duty of the anti-corruption agencies to go after the thieves. Where the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission could arrest a former council chairman in Kaduna in 2012 for alleged “illegal acquisition of properties worth billions of naira,” then state officials who brazenly commit similar breaches should not be spared.
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