LG Autonomy: What’s Tinubu’s game?

By Ochereome Nnanna

SOMETIMES Nigerians rejoice over some government policies only to find out later that they wasted their euphoria. Remember when the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, announced he would ensure electronic transmission of results in the 2023 general elections. Nigerians rejoiced. The sleeping youth awoke.

Everyone headed to voter’s card registration centres. Some fought and paid bribes just to get registered. Here was a chance to change the old order. “Vote wisely” was the song on every lip. In the end what did we get? The INEC electronic system our hopes for free and fair elections were hinged on mysteriously “glitched”. INEC resorted to the rigging system that produced the same old, discredited outcome! The Judiciary simply completed their own side of the plot, and here we are. Look at the price we’ve already paid after just one year!

The recent Supreme Court verdict mandating the Accountant General of the Federation to allocate federal revenue directly to democratically-elected Local Government Councils, LGCs, again made a lot of Nigerians very happy. It made their day that day. The assumption is that LGAs will become fully functional again as the money will no longer be hijacked by the Governors. Oh yeah? Just give this a few months, and watch lamentations return to the front pages. If you bemoan 36 guber monsters, you are going to get 774 autonomous demons!

Who told you that direct allocation makes the LGAs “autonomous”? The Chairmen and Councillors will still be handpicked by the Governor’s party and railroaded through the State Independent Electoral Commission, SIEC, to function at the Governor’s pleasure. The Governor still has his grip on the State Joint Local Government Account System, SJLGAS. The rubberstamp State Assemblies still have full power to supervise the LGAs and push them around at the Governors’ pleasure.

In truth, the local government is not supposed to be a tier of our federalism. In every federal system you have only the federal and subnational governments (states, regions, provinces, prefectures and others). The subnational tier is empowered to create and regulate the administration of the grassroots.

Our LG system is a hoax; a fraud. The military regimes after creating the states also created the LGs as the units through which federal revenue was shared. There were no open discussions or debates as to the criteria for creating them. The allied winners of the Nigerian Civil War simply helped their ethnic and regional groups to a lion’s share while relegating the ex-Biafrans. They simply plonked it into the Constitution when they were leaving. It was a ploy to ensure that their grassroots enjoyed the lion’s share of the oil wealth or National Cake. They listed the 774 LGAs in the Constitution, making it almost impossible to add or remove in future amendments.

The 1999 Constitution is ambiguous about powers over the LGAs. Section 7 gives the State the power to create new LGAs but they will only be constitutionally recognised after their names and headquarters have been listed by an Act of the National Assembly. It is also only then that they will be granted federal allocations. The arrangement is such that it is virtually impossible to create new LGAs. We are stuck with the self-serving structure left by the military.

The real question for me is: why is President Bola Tinubu suddenly interested in local government “autonomy”? Is he pandering to populism in the face of extreme hardship and the gradual build-up towards a mass-action showdown which is brewing in the system? If so, he is getting the applause, but for how long before the hunger and insecurity pangs reclaim the centre-stage?

We ask this question, bearing in mind that when he was a Governor, Tinubu asserted the right of Lagos State to create LGAs. He created the 37 units out of the 20 LGAs of Lagos State already listed in the Constitution. But because he failed to get the approval of the National Assembly for the official listing of his creations in the Constitution, they were renamed Local Government Development Areas, LCDAs. They share the federal allocations of the constitutional 20 LGAs. This was one of the strategies Tinubu used to cement his political capture of Lagos State.

Tinubu belongs to the “True Federalism” lobby of Nigerian politics. Even Tinubu’s newspaper, The Nation, in its article of December 8, 2023 titled: “Resolving constitutional dilemma on local government autonomy” (by Nicholas Kalu), reflected Section 7, and correctly observed: “…it suggests that the local government is not an autonomous entity in the sense that it cannot determine its business, free from the state government”.

LG “autonomy” seeks to weaken the Governors and give the President more access to the grassroots. “Autonomous” or rebellious LG Chairmen can feel free to defy their Governors and link up with the President for protection, and they will be obliged with Police, military and security protection. Tinubu’s interest on the LGAs’ status appears to have changed from what it was when he was the Governor of Lagos.

Rivers State is on my mind. Edo too, and others. Remember what he was recently seen on video boasting to his party men:

“As President and Commander-in-Chief, I will give Edo State back to you!”

It is about power, not “autonomy”.

 Just give this a few months, and watch lamentations return to the front pages; if you bemoan 36 guber monsters, you are going to get 774 autonomous demons!