Local governments and the illusion of autonomy in a federal state, By Doyin Odebowale

It is fraudulent to cling to local government autonomy in a Federation, while ignoring the more crucial issue of resource control.

PREMIUM TIMES

The Supreme Court decision is a major setback in the quest for real development in a country bedeviled with the challenges of nationhood. Emphasis should shift from revenue allocation to generation. Let each geo-political zone concentrate on its area of comparative advantage and pay taxes for maintenance and sustenance of a central government of manageable size, and not this current behemoth. The Federal Government cannot be gobbling 52 per cent of the national earnings and still legislate on how the States are run. The much celebrated victory will be Pyrrhic in the long run.

The latest judgement of the Supreme Court of Nigeria on the case instituted by the Attorney General of the Federation against the 36 State Governors has, expectedly, generated an instant myriad of reactions, on all the sides of the political cleavages which pundits find themselves.

There appears to be a unanimity of opinion on the ratio, as presented by the counsel who addressed the press after the judgement was delivered. The gravamen of the complaint, placed before the apex court for adjudication, borders on the peddled notoriety and recklessness of the 36 State Governors with regard to the federal allocations to the 774 local governments in the country. The learned Justices of the Supreme Court, according to the lawyer, interpreted the provision of Section 162 (3) of the 1999 Constitution, as amended in 2023, through the Fifth Alteration, to arrive at the decision.

This Section goes as follows: “Any amount standing to the credit of the Federation Account shall be distributed among the Federal and State Governments and the local government council in each state on such terms and in such manner as may be prescribed by the National Assembly.”

Section 162 (8) continues: “The amount standing to the credit of local government council of state shall 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 the State.”

From the foregoing, the Supreme Court, exercising its jurisdiction as a court of policy, pronounced on the mode of disbursement and, definitely, not the adornment of the local government council with borrowed but expedient robes, regardless of the attraction. Therefore, the wild jubilations and specious and sudden embrace of the values of propriety and probity, by even the most notorious of villains, are evidently misplaced.

It is only decent that all good people should join in extending, liberally, a well-deserved adulation to the Supreme Court Justices for rising to the occasion at this crucial moment in our quest for nation building. We must, however, throw in this caveat to guide against an omnibus application of a simple directive predicated on the fulfilment of a condition precedent. The Lord Justices directed that only the Local Governments with “democratically elected councils” should receive federal allocations. The determination of the councils qualified for the new grace is objective, however flawed the processes of the emergence of the so called democratically elected chairmen might have been. The judgement is a direct indictment on the local tyrants called Governors.

The preponderant belief in the likelihood of continued misappropriation of funds allocated to the local governments by the State Governors is, ostensibly, persuasive and compelling. The sanctimonious claim of the functionaries of the Federal Government, however, coupled with the boisterous and exigent support they are receiving, revolves round the charge of the denial of development at the grassroots by the Governors, through their fabled recklessness. No assertion can be too distant from the glaring realities on the ground as this manifestly dubious and hypocritical posturing.