NISER’s Reflection On Local Government Autonomy
Is’haq Modibbo Kawu
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It is poignant that I am writing these lines on the weekend that local government elections were held in Kwara State; the weekend of September 21st, 2024. I tracked the online outputs in the weeks leading to the polls.
No one could have missed the deep passion associated with the selection of candidates, the horse trading embedded with politicking at the local level, and the fact that individuals seeking to become councillors and chairmen, were usually part of the daily slug of community life.
Yes, the local government tier of administration resonates deeply with people in communities all over Nigeria.
Unfortunately, the returns on local administration have been very poor in our country. This tier of administration has been hobbled by so many is autonomy
At least, that is the most definitive framing of the issue in recent popular discourse in our country.
That is why there was so much outpouring of feelings when the Supreme Court ruled on July 11th, 2024, on the vexatious issue of local government autonomy. That ruling granted financial autonomy to the 774 local governments in the Nigerian federation.
The apex court’s ruling has been broadly welcomed in the country as the point of embarkation for a far more responsive and responsible local government system that could, eventually, hearken to the needs of the Nigerian people at the local level of administration.
Of course, the ruling has its own fair share of opponents, and as in most issues in the public space, the devil is always in the detail. What are the major gains that could flow from the Supreme Court’s ruling§?
What are the likely pitfalls of the new autonomy regime within the structures of local government administration in the country?
These are issues that we must begin to interrogate within the broad vistas that would likely open in local government administration.
The early bird eats the choice worm, as the saying goes. This is the context within which the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER), based in Ibadan, within its NISER RESEARCH SEMINAR SERIES (NRSS), organised a seminar on Tuesday, September 17th, 2024, with the theme: RELECTIONS ON THE SUPREME COURT JUDGMENT ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT FINANCIAL AUTONOMY.
The seminar brought together people of deep knowledge about the local government system, and these included intellectuals, civil society activists, and erstwhile leaders within the government system, as well as a keynote address, by a well-known legal practitioner in Nigeria.
The seminar was necessitated by the unending controversy about the place and role of the local government system in our country, despite the broad consensus that “local governance and socio-economic development are the prerogative of the local governments, being the closest government to the citizens”, in the words of the NISER Director General, Professor Antonia T. Simbine, in her opening remarks at the seminar.
Professor Simbine concentrated the minds of participants on the fact that “the third tier of government is a beneficiary of some 20.60 percent of national revenue on monthly basis…”.
Leaning on extant statistics, she added further that between January and July, 2024 alone, “the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC), disbursed a whopping N2.04 trillion to the country’s 774 local governments”.
What is worrisome is not the sums of money that these local governments receive from the federation account, but the near-absence of “commensurate development, especially in terms of human capital development as well as infrastructural facilities such as good roads, hospitals, schools, etc.”.
There are much deeper issues such as the “legal encumbrances” that their existence and establishment continue to face, and which affects their performance. A lack of fiscal independence, especially from the shackles of state governments, also challenges their autonomy.
Underlying these issues is the peculiar constitutional ambiguity that has dogged the vaunted third tier of administration in our country.
Professor Simbine summed it up tidily thus: “…anecdotal evidence suggests that local government’s non-performance in Nigeria is essentially due to its lack of financial and administrative autonomy.
Indeed, the general argument is that local government are not performing because they are not allowed to perform”.
This is the backdrop against which the Supreme Court’s landmark judgment of July 11th, 2024 was received in the country.
That ruling affirmed financial autonomy for Nigeria’s 774 local governments, and potentially opens up new possibilities of independence for the third tier of administration in Nigeria.
Adeniyi O. Akintola, CON, SAN, presented the keynote address which offered a broad historical survey of developments in local government administration in Nigeria, in terms of “structure, functions and revenue generation”, from the colonial era.
Akintola affirmed that there had existed “an efficient system of native administration in the various parts of what is now known as Nigeria. This was particularly the case in the Northern and Western parts…”.
It was these existing systems of traditional governance which provided colonialism “the much-needed workable basis for the introduction of the Indirect Rule system of governance, first in the Northern Protectorate and later in the Southern Protectorate”. The period between the 1890s and the 1930s were used to institute rudimentary native administrative systems in Nigeria.
The era of anti-colonial nationalism, according to Akintola, with its pressures for democratization and self-rule, by the 1950s, saw the commencement of modernized local administration “with elected members, increased responsibilities and enhanced financial status”.
These however suffered a decline of status between the 1960s and early 1970s, due to their inability to perform to expectations.
This led to the the 1976 Local Government Reforms, instituted “with the view to transforming the local governments into a separate tier of government, with clearly defined and enhanced responsibilities, improved financial status and more development-oriented and viable structural arrangements”.
Akintola further underlined the various functions performed by the native authorities under colonialism, ranging from “the maintenance of law and order, collection of taxes and rates, provision of primary education and health facilities as well as the maintenance of local roads”.
The realization that local governments can play an important role in national development, because of their closeness to the people, led to the far-reaching reforms that came in the wake of the 1976 Local Government Reforms.
The reforms defined the powers and functions of local governments and “made them an autonomous third tier of government, with enhanced prestige and increased responsibilities”.
Prestige enhancement, however, could not translate into meaningful development, with the paucity of funding for the local governments’ activities, as well as the constitutional or legal encumbrances that Professor Simbine identified, in her speech.
Akintola also pointed to a “state quagmire for local governments system in Nigeria”, that emerged from the 1999 constitution: “Under the 4th republic the country woke up (to) seeing the functions of the local government under the 4th schedule to the constitution been [SIC] usurped by the federal and later state governments”.
It is the “state quagmire”, in which Nigerian local governments had been moored, which led to the institution of the case which the Supreme Court ruled on, on July 11th, 2024.
Akintola pointed out the fact that the experience of local governments ensured that the judgment became very popular in Nigeria: “Practically, all the political heads including opposition leaders applauded the judgment”.
He nevertheless, also conceded that “…many well informed citizenry, lots of stakeholders at the local government have started pigeon holing the judgment as:
Not well thought out
Failed to take into account the sociological facts of the country and the various Local Government Areas.
The judgment contradicts the previous judgments of the same Court
The judgment usurped the functions of the National assembly to make or amend laws
The judgment have[SIC] created more problems that it sought to resolve”.
Akintola asserted that the minority judgment offered by Hon. Adewale Abiru JSC, had infact “anticipated the fears being expressed by (the) critical stakeholders at the local government levels. Hence his judgment rejected…the majority decision on that score”.
On the other hand, “the lead judgement declared emphatically that the local government is the third tier of government in Nigeria which the schedules of legislations in the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria never envisaged”.
On a final note, Akintola concluded that the prospects for good governance, flowing from the Supreme Court judgment, would depend on its implementation by all concerned parties in the country.
Professor R.C. Onah’s paper offered “Strategies for Ensuring effective Local governance in Nigeria”. The paper itemized three questions for interrogation.
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These were strategies to get the right type of human resources into the local government system, both elected and appointed; generation of data to enable effective service delivery, and competitiveness in service delivery, by local governments.
The paper offered the UNDP definition of governance which flowed from a 1997 policy paper, as well as the World Bank Definition of Governance, from which flowed the assertion that “effective local governance is… a prerequisite for national development”.
Onah went further that human resources are central to performance of every organisation, since other resources, financial or physical materials, would have to be effectively managed by human resources, to produce result.
Therefore, the election and appointment of quality human resources can only redound positively to the benefit of local governments in the era of effective autonomy.
The approaches that Onah canvassed included value orientation, education on responsibilities of elected and appointed local officials; while additional resources would include mitigation of primordial influences on these officers; and rewarding excellence.
She also offered suggestions on data, its gathering and effective deployment, to aid competitive service delivery at the local level.
Samaila Aliyu Makarfi a former Commissioner for Finance in Kaduna State, asserted in his presentation, that financial autonomy entails the independent control of their finances by the local government; the management of revenue generation, budgeting, and spending, as well as the prioritization of local needs and projects.
The subsisting situation is that states control local government finances; the Joint Accounts are managed by the states; and the Constitution in Sections 7 & 8, provides the basis for that state control.
What the Supreme Court judgment has triggered included the grant of financial autonomy to the local governments, and that has led to varying responses from state governments.
Makarfi noted that there are three perspectives amongst the states on financial autonomy for the local governments.
Bauchi State, for instance, seemed to support it, with its decision to scrap its Ministry of Local Government; those opposed express concern about corruption and inefficiency at the local level; while a middle ground, is that which sought a balance between autonomy, and state supervision.
In his view, financial autonomy would improve service delivery; can enhance accountability and transparency; developments can be tailored to local needs, thus empowering communities, as well as promote grassroots levels of democracy.
For him, there is still a transitional phase to financial autonomy, which could be clearer with constitutional amendment; local generation of revenue; enhanced budget control and fiscal responsibility; capacity building for local human resources, and strengthening mechanisms of transparency and accountability.
These mechanisms should include independent audits and involvement of anti-corruption agencies; citizens engagement through public forums and budgeting; deployment of digital platforms of tracking finances and performance; along with legal frameworks, such as the Freedom of information Act. On a final note, Makarfi added that financial autonomy is crucial for local governance in Nigeria.
Can Local Governments mobilize the capacity of non-state actors (CSOs, CBOs, private sector actors, etc.), to improve development outcomes at the local levels? This is the central plank of the presentation by Dr. Steve Ogidan, mni, at the NISER seminar.
He answered his own poser by asserting that indeed, “local governments can effectively mobilize non-state actors to drive sustainable development at the local level, improve the quality of life for citizens, and contribute to the overall progress of the country”.
The next logical question is, how that can be done. For him, the first step would be the creation of the conducive environment “by pushing a Legal and Policy Framework that will establish clear contexts and policies that support the involvement of non-state actors (NSAs) in development initiatives”.
This would entail their incorporation into the development agenda, with the local governments promoting the transparency and accountability in their operations that would build the trust and confidence of non-state actors. He similarly advocated the facilitation by local governments of effective communication and engagement.
Ogidan itemised the various elements of effective communication and engagement; then he looked at partnerships and collaborations, capacity building and their elements; resource mobilization and allocation with their components; accountability and monitoring, along with what they envisage, and finally, empowerment and ownership, with their components around local leadership and decentralization.
There are also perceptive insights on the prospects of effective development cooperation at the local level; the feasibility of public-private partnerships (PPP) at the local government level in Nigeria. For these he even presented examples of PPP models from Abuja and Lagos, as well as several other locations, around the African continent.
While positing that the PPP model offers real opportunities of delivery of essential services at the local government level, “efficiently and effectively”, he nevertheless accepted that “they also present several challenges that need to be carefully addressed”.
These range widely from regulatory framework, risk allocation, transparency and accountability challenges, corruption, community engagement, and capacity building issues.
Against that backdrop of challenges there are opportunities, which Ogidan further highlighted, to include possibilities in infrastructural development; efficient service delivery; bringing in private sector expertise; risk sharing; revenue generation; and job creation.
In the final analysis, Ogidan’s perspective is that “an ideal local government is a complex concept, as priorities can differ depending on the specific community”.
That “ideal local government”, remains a work in progress which can be erected on the basis of “citizen feedback, evaluation of policies, and adaptation to changing circumstances.
By striving towards these principles, local governments can create a strong foundation for a thriving and sustainable community”.
Cynthis Mbamalu, is the Director of Programs, Yiaga Africa, and her contribution offered perspectives on CSO and Media in the Accountability Space in the local level.
She dwelt on how CSOs and the media can assist in making local governments work, through the promotion of social audits at the local level, by tracking use of local government funds, and budget related issues.
They can also front up advocacy for legislative reforms, such as laws that can strengthen local governance functionality, and the review of state election laws, to assist the strengthening of State Independent Electoral Commissions (SIECs).
Mbamalu stated further that CSOs and the Media, can lead advocacy for policy standardization for local government elections; they can build citizen consciousness to make accountability demands; partner with civic actors to promote inclusive governance at the local level; as well as constantly identifying opportunities for progressive reforms as society evolves.
Her final statement on the matter is that there must be a national consensus on the operationalization of Nigerian federalism, in a manner which takes cognizance of “our local context and identity realities, functionality and utility that meets the needs of the people at the local level, sustainability and development of our democracy”.
In her opening remarks, the Director General of the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER), Professor Anthonia T. Simbine, had underlined the main objectives of the seminar to include the “development of actionable plans to drive effective implementation of the Supreme Court ruling, as well as identifying potential opportunities and challenges in the transition to financial autonomy for the 774 local governments”.
The various presentations certainly made remarkable strides in the direction sought by the management of NISER. Taken together, these presentations can offer a platform of robust reforms, to take the local government system in Nigeria on a more meaningful track of development.
Professor Simbine’s perspective, speaking for NISER, in the developing situation in Nigeria, against the backdrop of the Supreme Court judgment on Financial Autonomy, is very instructive.
It envisages a “return to effective local governance and administration”, as one of the ways out of the myriads of development challenges that dog our country.
That kind of effective structure of local governance exists in other climes, so, we don’t necessarily have to re-invent the wheel, in a manner of speaking.
As I concluded the writing of this piece, the newly-elected local government chairmen and councillors in Kwara State were sworn-in, in Ilorin. Are we likely to see the impact of the Supreme Court’s Financial Autonomy judgement in the performance of the 16 local governments in Kwara State? That is a process that we should closely follow in the months ahead.
Ilorin, Monday, September 23rd, 2024.
Is’haq Modibbo Kawu, PhD.; FNGE, is a Broadcaster, Journalist, and a Political Scientist.
