Last week, Nigeria’s Supreme Court took a fundamental step towards dismantling the grip of state governors on the local government, LG, system and local government funds. The Supreme Court ruling on a suit filed by the Attorney General of the Federation, pointedly said the governors were undermining the functionality and operations of the LG system. They stretched it further by inferring that the governors were hell-bent on destroying democracy.
In this landmark judgement, the Supreme Court made it clear that it is unconstitutional for state governments to control, withhold or tamper with funds meant for local governments and prohibited any further allocation of LG funds to state governments or funds to councils without elected officials.
Even with the best of intentions, the judiciary exercised legislative authority and redefined the fundamental concepts of federalism. With this move, Nigeria’s 774 local government councils will receive allocations directly, circumventing State-LG joint accounts prescribed by the Constitution in Section 162(6).
Presently, LGAs are provided for and captured in the Constitution, but they are just extensions and appendages, in fact, at the mercy of state governments. Governors and regional leaders have consistently opposed any attempt to provide LG autonomy from the post-independence days (1960-1966).
The subordination of that level of government and the alleged embezzlement of its finances reached a fever pitch in 1999. At some point, governors elected on the APC platform cautioned the National Assembly in 2013 to focus on their business and forget local government autonomy. The governors contend that other presidential-style federations, from which we derived our model, all have two tiers of federating units. The LGA system in all such two-tier federations is entirely and discretionarily the responsibility of the state government.
Governors perceive local government autonomy as a danger to their power and influence at the grassroots. They want to maintain a firm grip on LG politics and administration. Governors believe state autonomy and local government autonomy as congruent and not separated.
These ruling challenges this assumption and tries to establish LG autonomy and financial independence from the state. However, some have argued that it affects the balance of power between the federal and state governments when the federal directly funds the local governments and may use it to control or challenge the state power or other political leverage.
For decades, governors have been seen by the populace as meddling in the smooth functioning of LG councils, especially tampering with the funds allocated to that tier of government. The thrust of the Supreme Court ruling, which evidently was influenced by popular yearning, is on the issue of financial autonomy and did not extend to other fundamental issues affecting local government functionality in Nigeria.
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