The uncertainty over the delayed local elections in Lagos State typifies the unrepresentative state of local government administration in Nigeria. Lagos, like most other states, has been without elected councils many months after the expiration of the three-year term of the last set, a trend that hinders the entrenchment of democracy. Since the Fourth Republic got under way in 1999, democracy has eluded the grass-roots tier of governance and rendered it impotent in the development matrix.
When then Governor Babatunde Fashola dissolved the local government councils, directing the elected chairmen to hand over the reins to their executive secretaries in November last year, he was optimistic that fresh elections to produce new chairmen and councillors would be held within three months. But at the expiration of the three months, the state Ministry of Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs said the election would not hold, blaming the delay by the Independent National Electoral Commission in distributing Permanent Voter Cards in the state, as well as the non-release of an updated voter register to the Lagos State Independent Electoral Commission for the glitch.
Among opposition political parties and many voters, there was a sense of déjà vu. Experience had taught them to be wary of a ruling party that has serially made a clean sweep of the available seats on the occasions it had superintended LG elections in the state. It is a pattern reflected nationwide. When the Anambra SIEC conducted elections to the state’s 21 LG councils in January 2015, the ruling All Progressive Grand Alliance “won” all 20 of the chairmanship seats (election was postponed in one LG) and 304 of the 318 councillor seats initially declared.
Many state governments avoid the pretence of a flawed election altogether. Before the January polling, Anambra had not held any LG election since 1998, with successive governors contriving to control LGs through “caretaker committees.” On assuming office, one of the first actions of a new governor is to dissolve the elected or appointed caretaker councils and replace them with his own loyalists. This serves two related purposes: to control the LG machinery and, most importantly, the funds accruing to the LGs.
Since the Federal Government connived with state governors to dissolve the 774 LG councils in 2001, state governors have seized control of the councils, in clear defiance of the intention of the 1999 Constitution. The appointment of the first set of their handpicked caretaker committees and the access this provided to LG funds enabled state governors to permanently degrade the third tier of government into mere extensions of the executive mansions.
LGs, instead of primary agents of development, have often become impediments as well as conduits for fleecing the public till and for political patronage. The ruling All Progressives Congress must lead the charge and fulfil its campaign promise of change by democratising the LG system. An undemocratic local administration system negates the basic tenets of democracy and denies the overwhelming majority of the people a real say in how they are governed. The absurdity of direct funding from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation must be reviewed by a constitution amendment.
An LG is defined as a form of public administration existing as the lowest tier of administration within a state; it is most commonly referred to as the grass roots and every citizen or resident is accommodated in one LG area or the other, underscoring its importance. LGs are typically in charge of markets, local roads, parks, waste and sanitation, primary health care and birth/death records, among other duties. In federal states, LGs are recognised as the third or fourth tier of government and in unitary states, like the United Kingdom, as second or third tier.
To make LGs effective, we must remove the fiscal incentive that motivates state governors and the compliant state assemblies to be desperate to control them. The constitutional provisions of direct funding of LGs and the States/Local Government Joint Account should be scrapped as they are anomalous in a federal polity. Disbursements from the CRF for July 2015 showed that, of the total N521.26 billion, states got N140.03 billion plus N28.81 billion derivation, while the 774 LGs received N 105.41 billion. Effectively, despite their cries of low cash, the LG allocation is at the mercy of the state governors.
The solution is to have true representatives of the people running the LGs through transparent elections to enable the councils to truly serve the people and deliver development. Nigeria urgently needs fiscal federalism to give full effect to political federalism. Ours remains what a Professor of Constitutional Law, Itse Sagay, calls “feeding bottle federalism,” where the central government has an overbearing role and distributes money to the component states each month. States should fend for themselves, control their resources and remit an agreed percentage to the centre. States should also solely fund and regulate LGs: those that want 100 LGs or more could go ahead and do so, as long as they can fund them.
In the United States, most of the 50 states have two tiers of local administration − municipalities and counties − with the state governments making laws regulating them. They are openly democratic and in many counties, even judges, sheriffs and other law enforcement officials are directly elected. In Canada, the three tiers are lively democracies and Ontario Province has about 2,000 freely elected municipal, city, county, special districts, town and village local bodies. To cater for its own peculiarities, India passed the 73rd Amendment to its constitution in 1992 for a three-tiered local government system “to establish democracy at the grass-roots level.”
Since the process of amending the constitution is long, the anti-graft agencies should, in the interim, be strengthened and encouraged to take a hard look at LG funds as a means of checking their control by governors. State SIECs should be responsible and create a level playing field for democracy to thrive.
