LG Autonomy And Matters Arising

The Supreme Court judgment granting financial autonomy to the local government system in Nigeria has received general approbation from Nigerians.

The Supreme Court declared on Thursday, July 11, that it is unconstitutional for state governors to hold onto funds allocated for local government administration.

In the judgment delivered by Justice Emmanuel Agim, who led a seven-man panel, the apex court declared that the 774 local government areas in the country should be allowed to manage their funds themselves. It held that there are three tiers of government in Nigeria: the federal, the state, and the local government, and that the state government has no power to appoint a local government caretaker committee.

Also, a local government council is only recognisable if it emerged through a democratic election, as it frowned on the use of caretaker committees in which the governors appoint their cronies, in violation of the 1999 Constitution.

By this ruling, the apex court is trying to solve a problem that the legislature and the executive had tried but failed to achieve. The National Assembly had made several attempts during its constitution amendment processes since this democratic dispensation and passed bills to grant greater autonomy for the third tier of government.

However, when the process reached the state assemblies for concurrence, the state governors always used their overwhelming control of the state legislatures to frustrate the bill. In 2022, the Supreme Court quashed President Muhammadu Buhari’s Executive Order 10, which empowered the Accountant General of the Federation to bypass state governments and disburse federal allocations directly to local governments on the basis that it negated the federalism principle.

As a result, the intention of having the local government as the closest level of governance to the grassroots has been thwarted, as the governors have been starving them of funds, leaving them with little or nothing to operate, leading to the decrepit state of education, health, water and sanitation, security, and demographic data collation, among others.

Some legal minds have picked holes in the judgment, saying the apex court ignored constitutional provisions in this matter. They cite Section 162(8), which states that “the amount standing to the credit of the Local Government Councils of the State shall also be distributed among the Local Government Councils of that State on such terms and in such manner as may be prescribed by the House of Assembly of the State.” Also, Section 162 (6) created the State/LG Account, while Section 162 (5) says, “The amount due to LGs from the federation account shall also be allocated to the state for the benefit of their Local Government Councils in such a manner as may be prescribed by the National Assembly.”

These sections make local government administration the responsibility of the state government. But in what appears like another ‘doctrine of necessity,’ which the Senate invoked during President Musa Yar’Adua’s illness to transfer executive powers to then Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, the apex court ruled that the “demands of justice require a progressive interpretation of the law… In this case, since paying them through states has not worked, the justice of this case demands that LG allocations from the federation account should henceforth be paid directly to the LGs.”

The governors had used the State/LG Joint Account according to their whims and caprices, and not to the benefit of the local councils as the constitution had stipulated.

This they could do because they controlled who ran the local governments through appointing their cronies as caretaker council chairmen or by conducting sham LG polls. Those who emerge, therefore, are beholden to the governors. Coupled with docile, rubber-stamp state legislatures, the governors completely emasculated the LG system for decades.

Consequent upon the Supreme Court ruling, commentators have pointed out that in line with the spirit of the judgment, further action is needed to further remove the LG system from the stranglehold of governors.

A major factor is ensuring that LG councils emerge through the popular will of the people, not from sham elections that INEC chairman Prof Mahmood Yakubu recently described as mere coronations, where in elections conducted by States’ Independent Electoral Commissions (SIECs), there is no biometric identification (BVAS) and vote register, and the ruling party wins everything!

Recently, the Senate has attempted to address this matter with the National Local Government Independent Electoral Commission (NILGEC) Bill that has passed the first reading in the upper chamber. It seeks to establish an electoral umpire to conduct all LG elections in the country.

However, as a newspaper, we do not support such a body. It is a negation of the federalism principle as well as the Tinubu administration’s expressed plan to adopt the Steve Oronsaye report that recommended merging or subsuming duplicitous ministries, departments, and agencies of government (MDAs) in order to cut down on the cost of governance.

Luckily, the INEC chairman has declared that INEC has the capacity to conduct council elections. That offers a better chance for credible elections than what SIECs have been doing. However, the ruling party must allow INEC free hands to conduct council polls without undue interference. Nothing good will come from moving the control of local councils from the states to the federal.

It is our opinion that this Supreme Court judgment will help improve governance in the communities. They can more easily respond to the needs of localities, as well as help in national security. The local councils can be used to collate demographic data for national planning. Also, each local government can be the first point of dealing with bandits and terrorists through the use of LG security councils, which will easily work with state and federal security authorities to rout the outlaws.

Finally, it will be easier to hold LG bosses immediately accountable for any misuse of public funds since they are not covered by the immunity clause which presidents and governors enjoy.