Lagos State held elections into its 20 local governments (LGs) and 37 Local Council Development Authorities (LCDAs) on July 22. The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) won the Chairmanship in all the 57 LGs and LCDAs and 369 councillorships, leaving the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Accord Party (AP) with four and three councillorship seats, respectively. In all, 20 parties contested the election that left 17 of the parties with no seats won.
While we congratulate the government of Governor Akinwunmi Ambode and the APC for winning the election, especially being the first in the last five years, we hasten to add that the sweeping success the ruling party had in the state reflects a tendency which has been with us for long, but which portends danger for the health and growth of democracy. The results are hardly different in the other states where ruling parties almost always achieve one hundred per cent success in local government elections.
This undermines the fundamental purpose of the framers of the constitution in creating the third tier of government, which is closest to the people at the grassroots. It is at the level of the local government, therefore, that democracy as a system of modern governance should, ordinarily, get the fillip for its meaning as the government of the people, by the people and for the people.
But, what do we find? Successive governments at the state level, especially since the advent of the Fourth Republic, have found ways to ensure that the ruling parties win all the council polls. This could discourage the people from popular participation in elections at this level of government and narrow their choice of leaders to the preferences of state godfather(s) and state governments.
The ordinary man will be the worse for it, as his voice is taken from him and he is alienated from his council leaders. It is no surprise, therefore, that there is today a complete abdication of responsibilities at the local government level. In most of the states, they exist as mere appendages of the state governments and function at the pleasure of the state governors.
This state of near-comatose existence of the local governments has led many to wonder what to do with that tier of government. While the National Assembly may have opted to free the local government accounts from the control and supervision of state governors as per their recent amendment of the constitution, there are subsisting questions about the nature of our federalism still waiting to be addressed. For example, the question of whether we would have a proper federation with the states as federating units or continue to have the novelty of a third level of government created by military fiat as we presently have it.
Addressing the question once and for all would decisively answer the question of what to do with the local governments. If our federation is allowed to truly blossom with the federal and states as the proper federating units, then the states would be empowered to create whatever structure of governance at the local level as may serve their respective purposes. It would remove the clamour for additional local governments presently fueled by the realization that it is a federal revenue earning unit recognised by the constitution.
The suggestion, too, that the national electoral commission should take over the function of the state electoral commissions in the hope that it would remove council elections from the current stranglehold of state governors would fly out through the window, realising that the short-term gain intended may be overtaken by long term losses. The citizens’ attitude to governance at the local government level would change the moment they realise that much of their existence is tied to what happens at that level. The state governors, too, would be on notice knowing that the citizens would hold them fully responsible for the inability of the local governments to function.
In most states today, there is hardly any Grade C road, supposedly the responsibility of local governments, that is worth the name. It is a near-complete abdication of responsibilities as they hide under the overbearing control of state governors who must supervise the operations of joint state/local government accounts as presently provided for in the constitution.