NEW LEASE FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENT? (11)

Even with all the drawbacks, the Supreme Court ruling should should act as a catalyst for better council administration

President Bola Tinubu has hailed the Supreme Court’s judgment on local government autonomy, describing it as a reaffirmation of the Constitution. “This country belongs to all of us. By virtue of this judgment, our people – especially the poor – will be able to hold their local leaders to account for their actions and inactions,” said the president who noted that ineffective local government administration has been a significant obstacle to national progress. “My administration instituted this suit because of our unwavering belief that our people must have relief and today’s judgment will ensure that it will be only those local officials elected by the people that will control the resources of the people.”

While many stakeholders have hailed the apex court judgment, it has also thrown up several implications, one of which is the survival of Local Council Development Authorities (LCDAs) in states that have created them. With the funds going directly to the 774 local government areas listed in the constitution, there is no longer any room for ‘financial engineering’ to fund the LCDAs by the governors. But this does not mean that the local governments are totally free because the process of electing their officials still resides with the State House of Assembly. And this is where the governors still hold the aces.

 The Supreme Court has reaffirmed its earlier judgment on elected officials. But from what has transpired over the years in states that conduct elections for local government chairmen and councillors, winners get rigged into their offices with the support of the governors. After their elections, many of them are either only too grateful to do the bidding of the governors or are too scared to assert their independence. In most cases, they are constantly reminded of the skewed process that brought them to the office. They are therefore inundated with warnings on the repercussions of holding any dissenting views. The states’ houses of assembly would further compound this situation by issuing threats of impeachment to the beleaguered council bosses. Cowed and compromised, council officials end up not achieving much to the chagrin of the electorate.

 Aside from the fact that the local government system being operated in the country is broken, in most federations, there are two tiers of government: the centre and the states/regions. Making local government a federating unit is an aberration that has been compounded by the fact that they are listed in the Constitution along with the names of their headquarters. Ordinarily, local governments should be administrative units of each state that should be able to decide, based on its topography and needs, to have as many and as few as it wants, as long as it can fund them. So, what ordinarily should be states’ administrative units have become a hot political issue because of the money being shared from the federation account.

The resultant effect is that wide-scale retardation and atrophy becomes the norm yet the received wisdom is that with the local governments not performing to the required optimal level, the nation generally suffers. This is essentially because it is the level of government that is closest to the people and should be the most responsive to their needs. An effective local government system, where the chairmen and councillors are prepared to work and where they are not stifled by the governors, is much needed for human development. If we must upgrade the quality of leadership to bring back the glorious days when council administrations were the nucleus of governance in our country, a new framework must be formulated. We hope the Supreme Court judgment will act as the spur for that much-needed reform of the local government system in Nigeria.