Rescuing Local Government From Limbo

The local government system is one of the three tiers of government, set up by the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to discharge different levels of social contracts with the Nigerian people. These governments – the federal, state  and local,  draw funds monthly from a pool of the nation’s commonwealth which accrues through the federation’s  account to enable them  function.  While the other two tiers independently articulate their respective affairs to pursue various governance goals and objectives, the local government has over the years remained under the dictates of the second-tier when in the real sense, the local government,  being the closest to the grassroots, should be the most important government level. Moreso, the local government area has the advantage of uniformity in ethnic, linguistic and cultural harmony, which enables for greater understanding, acceptability and mutual trusts, as against the polarising diversity encountered by the wider tiers.
It is therefore, unfortunate that the local government found itself  hamstrung by the actions of state government, the inadvertent acquiessence of the federal government, as well as by the pliability of some local government officials. The unhindered functionality of local councils should have created the vital governance connections needed between Nigeria’s leaderships and its peoples, as well as form  the foundations from which local officials, groomed in good governance affairs, are raised for both state and federal duties. It was therefore cheering when the news filtered that the federal government, through the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Prince Lateef Fagbemi, had filed a suit at the Supreme Court against the 36 state governments to demand full autonomy for all LGAs in the country. It should be recalled that the National Assembly during the past regime of President Muhammadu Buhari had passed a bill for full local government autonomy but the process got stalled by non-ratification by state houses of assembly. The present National Assembly is also working on a bill that would empower the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), rather than governor-controlled State Independent Electoral Commissions (SIECs), to conduct local government elections. These are trail-blazing reforms, and deserve some  commendations.
In the latest onslaught by the Federal Government to ensure that democratically elected governments run the local councils, it has secured a Supreme Court order “restraining the governors, their agents and privies, from receiving, spending or tampering with funds released from the Federation Account for the benefits of local governments when no democratically elected local government system is put in place in the states,” with a further order stopping state governors from embarking on unilateral, arbitrary and unlawful dissolution of democratically elected local governments, while permitting that funds in the credits of local governments be directly paid to them from the federation account in line with the provisions of the constitution as against payments to joint accounts with state governments.  The court went further to bar governors from further constituting caretaker committees to run the affairs of local governments, as governors like Prof. Charles Soludo of Anambra State is bent on doing. Prof Soludo, having come from outside the usual pack of Nigerian politicians, his case has become the most bizzare, infamous and disappointing  for a prominent economist who supposedly knows the impacts of micro and macro economic policies, and had promised during his swearing-in on March 17, 2022, that “We will conduct local government elections. No doubt, the uniform local government system as the third federating unit is one of the contesting features of our federalism, but we must make the best of a bad system by unleashing the potential of governance at a lower level.”
Despite these reassuring statements, Prof Soludo rather broke the records by infamously appointing seven regimes of local government Transition Committees in just two years, each serving a tenor of three months. Yet, he has just dissolved the seventh set of committees to appoint an eighth, before recent court orders. Actions by the likes of Governor Soludo are capable of disorienting local government officials to the point of being inadequate in the discharge of constitutional duties. As part of outcries elicited by Governor Soludo’s baffling intransigence, member representing Ogbaru Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives and Labour Party’s House of Representatives Caucus Leader, Hon. Afam Ogene, in a press statement condemned the move while saying that, “This puppeteering style of leadership, which toys with the destiny, aspiration and desires of the grassroots, must be resisted and not allowed to continue to shrink the development potentials of the LGAs”. While emphasising that local councils should not be at the whims of state governors, Hon. Ogene said that, “Such undemocratic practice of appointing LGA administrators, rather than democratic election, is an enabler of impunity and lack of democratic accountability and also hurts transparency in the local government  and   state as a whole, as those so appointed would only scramble for personal interests during the three months of their stay in office.”
In a similar move, a lawyer, Chukwuebuka Mmeni Esq, in a suit filed against the Anambra State governor at an Abuja High Court secured an order, restraining the Accountant General of the Federation and the Federal Ministry of Finance from further remitting funds due to the 21 LGAs of Anambra State to the Soludo-led state government. The era when governors see monthly local government allocations as windfalls that grease their political ambitions should not be encouraged. When the local governments eventually get their full autonomy, it would enable them decisively tackle the challenges of poor basic educational infrastructure, disfunctional primary healthcare systems, poor environmental sanitation and erosion controls, rural markets, town planning and building developments, rural agriculture and sports development. It is pertinent at this point to note that local councils had greater freedoms ab initio, much of it during the military era, but due to failures to regularly pay the salaries of staff, especially primary school teachers and primary healthcare officials, state governments seized the opportunity to form joint accounts with which payment of council staff salaries have been somewhat regular, yet much staff still suffer stagnated promotions.
That incursion by state governments has created opportunities for impunity on the parts of many governors, leading to greater alienation of municipal administration and the neglect of its other crucial roles. Therefore, in the genuine pursuit of restoring full local government autonomy, a guiding framework should be put in place to forestall a repeat of the mistakes of past local administrations. The opportunity to undergo the learning process of state building at the basic level of society is, however very vital.

Joseph Nwankwo