Supreme Court On LG Autonomy: A Mixed Bag Of Fortunes (4)

“Since, we run a rentier revenue system, where states and local governments depend on monthly allocation from the Federation Account, it is well-nigh impossible for any local council created by the state to get the consequential recognition of the National Assembly for the purpose of revenue allocation because the federal legislators will be divided along ethnic and regional lines, with the aim of cornering the most financial resources to their respective states or regions. 

Hence every state will consequently turn every household into a local council for the purpose of receiving statutory vote from the Federation Account. Therefore, despite the genuine need for creation of more local councils in some states, none has successfully been recognised by the constitution since return to civil rule in 1999.

For instance, Lagos State, despite its sprawling population, has 20 local councils. Attempts to create additional councils when the current President served as Governor from 1999 to 2007 were frustrated at the national level. In the suit, Lagos State v Federal Government in 2004, the Supreme Court described the new local councils created as ‘inchoate’, needing the final recognition in the constitution through the National Assembly. Kano State has 44 local governments! Jigawa State, which was carved out from Kano State in 1991, has 27 local councils! Worse still, Kastina State commands 34 local councils in comparison with Lagos, the commercial nerve-centre of the nation, with larger contribution to the national cake! Of course, the more the local councils, the more the federal allocation to the state! 

Hence the argument that the current agitation about local government autonomy is largely misplaced without addressing the wrongs of the past, perpetrated during the several military interregnums, where the military leaders, dominated from a section of the country, disproportionately created, by fiat, local councils in favour of their states and regions. 

The clamour or current hysteria for local government autonomy should have gone pari passu with the discussion on the sources of revenue to administer the local administration in Nigeria. Without crude oil from the Niger Delta, majority of the 36 states will be in dire financial straits and go under. There is also the argument that in view of proliferation of states (36 in number), which are largely unviable, should full-blown political and administrative structures exist at the local level, leading to huge cost of governance?

In view of the above, this newspaper welcomes the call by the Senate for the convocation of a national dialogue on local government system in Nigeria. Such a platform should thoroughly appraise the place of local government in the socio-economic development of the country. Germane issues for critical consideration should include the desirability or otherwise of local council being in a federal (Nigerian) constitution or a constitutionally-recognised tier of government. Is a full-blown governmental structure at the local level desirable, given the proliferation of states, which are burdened by huge cost of governance? Should there be uniformity in the operational regime, including salary or wage structure of local councils across the country, as it is currently the case? What conditions will conduce to creation of local government in a particular state?

What will be the financial sustainability of a full-blown local government administration in the light of the Federation Account being subject to the vagaries of oil prices in the international market? How will the justified agitation for resource control and return to the fiscal federalism of the independence era impact on local council administration across the country? Will local government autonomy promote financial transparency and accountability and consequently development or amount to the third tier of sleaze, peculation or resource misappropriation, which is dominant at the federal and state levels?”

While we appreciate the salutary intention to ensure that local council funds are not diverted or mismanaged by the state governments, unfortunately, the Supreme Court would seem to have overreached itself in the July 11, 2024 decision with regards to ordering direct payments of federal allocations to local councils. It not only (unwittingly) upended its 2002 decision in Attorney-General of Ogun State & Ors v Attorney-General of the Federation but would seem to have violated the express provisions of the Constitution to boot.

Therefore, in the light of the constitutional dilemma thrown up by the ruling of the apex court vis-à-vis the federal structure of Nigeria, convocation of a national dialogue on local government system, as earlier demanded by the Senate, is imperative.