I want to share some experiences. I have never been a local government worker. But I have come very close to those who worked at that tier of government and the stories they tell about how council areas are managed leaves one wondering how the councils are expected to be effective and deliver on the expectations of the people as far as the development of our communities is concerned. My first shocker was interacting with a local government chairman in a South East state. I was terrified by the details he shared with me. For instance, he was emphatic that, with joint accounts, no local government can deliver good governance or anything near it. He was sure that with the management of the local government system by governors, no chairman will be in a position to even construct a culvert or maintain primary schools in their domain. It is that bad!
The chairman told me that allocations from the Federation Account to local government areas in the state were lodged into a joint account managed by the state governor. In his peculiar experience, he said the governor would invite him and other chairmen to demand the details of their council’s wage bills. According to him, the governor would approve for release of only the wages and another N1m for each chairman as a security vote and something extra, usually not more than N2m, for other overhead demands. After this, none of the chairmen got anything else, as everything about project development was considered the job of the governor. It was not their business what happened to the balance of their allocations. Sadly, they had to sign off on documents indicating that allocations to their councils were fully released to them. And, as he told me, “This is why you can’t see any of us doing anything, not even to grade community roads”.
The import of what this council chairman told me came back strongly when I encountered someone who had just been appointed chairman of a local government by a governor in the southeast. His first reaction was to celebrate that he has been liberated and uplifted –God had answered his prayers. When I took him on what legacy projects he intended to leave behind, he looked at me like I was naive. Of course, I was because I did not know the ground rules of accepting appointment as local government chairman especially, in an election year. His assignment, as he told me, was not to do any projects but to ensure that the governor got the majority of the votes from the council area at the next election. For this reason, he confessed to me that allocations to the local government are considered as ‘governor’s money’ and the governor had to show them love by giving them something every month to pay salaries, “when it becomes absolutely necessary” and something more to manage ‘stakeholders’ in the council area. He also confessed that he equally got something from the governor every week to ‘manage our boys on the ground’ who would be deployed to harvest votes for the governor.
The local government chairman told me that he never got to know exactly how much came to his council area from the federation account. “Asking to know means that I want to challenge the governor. How do you expect me to do that after this favour he did to me?” Interestingly, the governor got re-elected and the chairman was handsomely rewarded for ensuring that almost 90 percent of votes from his council area were delivered in favour of the governor. Sadly, he could not point to any project he executed while in office.
In contrast, I visited a northwest state where, alongside other journalists, I toured some local government areas. Despite being rural communities, they had tarred roads. My inquiries showed that the governor allowed elected local government chairmen in the state to manage their council’s allocations alongside their councilors and supervisory councilors. The caveat, however, was that every local government administration must deliver on some kilometers of road in every budget cycle under the supervision of the governor. And, they did. People in the rural areas had access to their local government chairman because they lived with them, interacted with them, and understood their needs. In many states in the south, council chairmen live in the state capital and visit their offices occasionally.
The fact, as it is prevalent in Nigeria, is that the developments of communities have stalled because of the hijack of the local government system by governors. Most local government chairmen lack the financial capacity to even maintain rural earth roads. They can’t provide pipe-borne water –not even to sink boreholes for communities. They can’t maintain primary school walls and can’t make rural healthcare centers functional. Event markets in the headquarters of the council areas are decrepit and abandoned. Only some urban local government areas are functional in Nigeria. All these happen because of the lack of financial autonomy for local governments. This lack is orchestrated by governors who insist on running joint accounts and administering the councils through appointees. The appointees, like some elected chairmen, agree to sign off council allocations so as to retain their offices.
This practice has been sustained since 1999 because Nigerians fix their gaze on the wrong place and refuse to demand autonomy for local governments from their leaders. The reality is this: a Nigerian president has no powers over local government administration. He lacks the constitutional powers to order certain behaviors at that level of government. Muhammadu Buhari’s Executive Order on LG autonomy failed, under challenge at the Supreme Court, for this reason. This is why Nigerians need to begin to demand an amendment to the constitution to give effect to the autonomy of the local governments so that they take direct charge of their allocations and manage the same for the development good of the council areas. They also must begin to demand that their local governments be administered by their elected chairmen and councillors. If power derives from the people, the people must also be seen to exercise that power in electing those that would serve them at the council areas and advance the development of rural communities.
Nigerians cannot all be looking towards Abuja for the development of their council areas while ignoring the need for them to be eternally vigilant over how state governors manipulate the legislative structures of the state to continually handpick local government leaders and also, stifle the councils by denying them their statutory allocations from the federation account. Sadly, none of the presidential candidates in next month’s election, except for PDP’s Atiku Abubakar, who has promised to restructure Nigeria, is committing to help push through a constitutional amendment process that will guarantee the autonomy of local governments across Nigeria.