The state of local governments in Nigeria is a cause célèbre, an issue of intense public discourse. In fact, the subject is one of President Muhammadu Buhari’s hobby horses, something that readily triggers righteous anger in him.
Ask President Buhari about restructuring, he would narrow down the issue to how local governments are treated in Nigeria. “The local government system has been killed,” he said in his Arise TV/ThisDay interview in June last year.
Well, the truth is that President Buhari is right. Local governance is utterly debased in Nigeria. State governments, the second tier of government, trample upon local governments, the supposed third tier. Every attempt to grant autonomy to local governments has been stoutly resisted by state governors who assert the right of oversight over them.
As the tier of government closest to local people and organisations as well as to traditional institutions, strong local governments have the wherewithal to tackle insecurity, stimulate the local economy and reduce poverty
The latest of such resistance was the governors’ opposition to President Buhari’s Executive Order 10 of 2020, which grants financial autonomy to local governments.
But the situation is even more sinister. In the Arise TV/ThisDay interview, President Buhari said that local government chairmen “have been compromised,” insinuating that they were being bullied by state governors to surrender much of their statutory allocations. President Buhari said: “You as a local government are supposed to receive N300 million. A document is given to you to sign that you have received N300m, but you are given only N100m”.
Put simply, President Buhari was accusing state governors of extortion, of putting a gun to the heads of council chairmen to take money belonging to local governments. Even if the facts are not exactly as President Buhari stated them, the incontrovertible truth is that state governors treat council chairmen with utter contempt and ride roughshod on the financial and administrative autonomy of local governments.
But while President Buhari’s righteous outrage is justified, his visceral opposition to restructuring discredits his posture. This is because the problems of local governments can only be tackled as part of restructuring the Nigerian Federation. It is, therefore, not credible for President Buhari to lament the utterly appalling state of local governments and yet reject restructuring. You can’t say something is wrong and reject the means of fixing it!
Well, before we discuss how to fix the problems of local governance in Nigeria, let’s first talk about its value. This is important because, apparently, Nigeria lacks a deep philosophical understanding of the significance of local government, hence local governments are reduced to utter irrelevance. Yet, the principle of local government autonomy is based on centuries-old ideas about the universal values of local governance.
The first value is local democracy. John Stuart Mill, a strong defender of local governments, argues that strong local governance fosters strong local democracy. Thus, anyone who values democracy must value strong local governments.
Robust local democracy, which results from strong local governance, acts as an incubator of, or breeding ground for, credible state-level and national politicians.
Elsewhere, many prominent state and national politicians cut their teeth in local politics, and some local government leaders or mayors in the US and the UK are renowned.
Hardly so in Nigeria. Furthermore, in other climes, the party that controls a state often doesn’t control most of its local governments. For instance, it is common in the UK for the ruling party at the centre to lose lots of seats in local government elections, while smaller parties win massively in those elections.
But in Nigeria, the party that controls a state almost always controls all its local governments. Why? Well, because the state governors have so crippled the local government system that robust and competitive local democracy does not exist.
The second value of local governance is local development. Alexis de Tocqueville, another 19th-century champion of local governance, posits that, because of their local proximity and knowledge and the local specificity of their actions, local governments can unlock local development better than state and central governments.
As the tier of government closest to local people and organisations as well as to traditional institutions, strong local governments have the wherewithal to tackle insecurity, stimulate the local economy and reduce poverty.
Indeed, as the World Bank once put it, “poverty is best tackled at the local level”. Therefore, in order to tackle insecurity, boost the local economy and reduce poverty, local governments must be empowered and strengthened.
So, robust local governance matters. This is why strong, autonomous local governments are an integral part of the fabric of civilised societies, a critical component of their governance structures.
Sadly, in Nigeria, local governments are emasculated financially, hobbled administratively and diminished politically. But what’s the way forward?
Well, first, we must recognise that, in a federal system, local governments are a matter for state governments, not the Federal Government. Just as states are the federating units of the Federation, local governments are the constituent units of the state.
Thus, in that respect, the 1999 Constitution is wrong to list, in section 7, local government functions, thereby mandating uniformity, which violates the federalist principle of diversity.
The Constitution is also wrong to specify, in Schedule 1, the number and names of local governments in each state, undermining the states’ autonomy to create local councils.
In the United States, where Nigeria claims to have copied its system of government from, local government is a matter of state law under Dillion’s Rule. Each of the 50 states has its own constitution and grants “home rule” either in all matters or in some matters to their local governments.
What’s more, some states conduct referendums on what additional powers to grant to their local governments; in other words, the people themselves decide!
So, the starting point in tackling the problems of local governments in Nigeria is to respect the true spirit of federalism and treat local government as a matter of state law, not federal law. This means that any new Federal Constitution that emerges from restructuring Nigeria should contain no binding provisions on local governments.
Second, just as the Federal Constitution defines and governs the relationships between the Federal Government and the state governments, state constitutions should define and govern the relationships between state and local governments.
However, as I argued in this column last week, I believe that the current state structure is not viable and should be replaced with the zonal structure, based on the six geo-political zones. Thus, instead of state constitutions, we should have zonal or regional constitutions.
Read also: What is Nigeria’s government for?
Each geo-political zone or region should create its own local governments and determine their functions, based on the principle of subsidiarity, and after a referendum. The functions of the local governments, their fiscal autonomy, their relationships with other tiers of government within each region, and critical safeguards for accountability and checks and balances, should be expressly defined in the zonal or regional Constitution.
Last year, the South-West governors proposed that each of the six geo-political zones should have its own Supreme Court. While the Federal Supreme Court in Abuja will be the final arbiter in all disputes between states and the Federal Government, including on federal elections, the zonal Supreme Court will be the final court in all disputes within each geo-political zone or region, including disputes between local governments and other institutions within a region.
Basically, this approach constitutionalises local government autonomy within a geo-political zone and allows the zonal Supreme Court to safeguard the autonomy. Brilliant!
Finally, the profile of local government chairmen should be raised. They should be called mayors. But to make it attractive for credible politicians to want to be mayors, a local government should not be too small; it should be big enough to have clouts.
Nigeria needs strong, autonomous local governments to engender robust local democracy and development. The structural and constitutional arrangements outlined here will guarantee their autonomy and viability.
