Mr President, I bring the matter of local government autonomy to your table again this morning.  It is fundamental, and you must appreciate it to drive the process.  You must read this along with the twentieth instalment of this serial for an unbroken stream of thoughts. Perhaps, I should supply a recap of the instalment by a United States resident who read the piece and did so in a private communication to appreciate my effort.

To quote: “With local governments, there should not be room for central governments to finance and, or control local governance. What exists in Nigeria is simply local government establishment for regional resource capture by, in this case, northern political elites at the expense of southern political elites. Under normal circumstances, local government units exist because they can mobilise internal resources for their operations—not robbing Okonkwo and Adedoyin to help Kwankwanso and Idris chop”.

What my reader captures vividly is the ulterior motive behind the creation of local government by the hegemonic forces in the country, who became converted unitarist after the “return march” of July 1966 (apologies to Billy Dudley). The command structure of the military meant a centralised bureaucratic structure of governance, and this fact was harnessed, Aguiyi Ironsi having already shown the way, to atomise, in other words, undermine the federal nature of the Nigerian state.

The proliferation of local governments, ostensibly to bring government closer to the people, ran simultaneously with the creation of states. Under the Ibrahim Babangida administration, the creation of states was part of his failed self-transmutation project. Each time states were created, the transition programme was also extended to allow for the nursing of the new states.

There are two contradictions that the crusaders of local government autonomy want to address. One is the mismanagement of local government funds by state governors who are new emperors, in the Nigerian governance process who have unrestricted access to the state-local government joint account. Two is the democratisation of the local government administration that has been abused by the state emperors who dissolved and imposed caretaker committees at will.

However, the solution that the current Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federal Government seeks through the judiciary is misplaced and wants to be seen to be busy. I say so for several reasons. One, full autonomy to local governments in ways that make them a tier of the state, not of government, undermines the federation that is Nigeria. Autonomy of the local governments in the way presently conceived plays into the hands of those who created the local governments arbitrarily for state capture and hegemonic design.

Unfortunately, present representatives of the East and West and the Middle belts in the National Assembly do not understand the matter. To define in layman’s terms, the state is an entity that has territory, population, sovereignty, government, and has a monopoly over the use of force.  From this definition, you can see that government is just one of the components of a state. Some people championing local government autonomy do so ignorantly, while others are conscious of the ulterior motive. You do not resolve a contradiction with a contradiction. Regrettably, that is what your government is doing through the office of the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the state.

Nigeria is implicitly, and logically so, a two-tier federation. Because it is the peoples of the territory called Nigeria that are parties to the federal covenant. Their respective regions or states, as presently constituted under the extant constitution, have the full powers to create the number of local governments required for local administration. Revisit the case of Lagos State Versus. Federal Government of Nigeria under Obasanjo administration, that your leadership in Lagos state pursued, the contradictions become too glaring.

Before making further suggestions, let us play the devil’s advocate. Has it ever occurred to those who want autonomy granted to the local governments that local chairmen are as corrupt as other public officials? In some instances, even wives of councillors go to market with sirens.  A

Also, has it ever occurred to the crusaders of autonomy, that the extant 774 local governments, except for a few, do not function, but as mere avenues for siphoning national resources? It is the reason that Senator

Jibrin Barau

, the Deputy Senate President, in a rare expression of honesty, said local governments in Nigeria were dead albeit providing the wrong solution in sheer financial autonomy that plays into the design of those who created the 774 local governments arbitrarily.

What is to be done? Your government through the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the federation should engross a bill for (1) removal of the imprimatur of the national parliament over local government creation to be solely the business of the federating state so to do, and (2) abrogate the direct allocation of revenue to local governments from the federation account in ways that revenue is shared between the federating state and the federal government.

That done, it becomes the business of state governments to create and appropriate for local governments as they deem fit. It is the responsibility of the state legislature to enact laws for the running of local government. The question may arise, which is that the current state houses of assembly lack autonomy, and are under the control of state governors? Let me say that Nigeria’s history did not start in 1999.

The contradictions of the fourth republic do not theoretically and practically annul the state legislature as the guts of the democratic process at that level. We had in the past powerful and independent legislatures that could remove an erring governor. The critical point is the entrenchment of the rule of law.
Akhaine is Professor of Political Science at the Lagos State University.