Let Us Not Celebrate Our Lgas Yet

By:

Nurudeen Dauda
nurudeendauda24@gmail.com
nurudeendauda24@yahoo.com
nurudeendauda.blogspot.com

To start with, after the much celebrated Supreme Court judgement backing the full financial "autonomy" of Local Governments there are still other fundamental issues that must be addressed for us to get it right in our LGAs administrations as follows: one; Local Government elections, two; the issue of Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) and three; Local Governments reform. It is apt to state that we still have a very long long way to go!

Firstly, the issue of free, fair, and credible elections in Nigeria remain a major challenge, but it is even "worst" at the local governments levels where the State Independent Electoral Commissions conduct elections. It is "unheard" of and or "unthinkable" even in the so-called advanced democracies of the world to have a scenario where all elections are won by a single political party in an election as it does happen in the Nigerian LGAs elections.

There is a near "consensus" that local government system in Nigeria is being abused by states governors perhaps due to lacuna in our constitution. States governors are being accused continually for "withholding" LGAs allocations using the States and Local Governments Joint Account provided by the section 162 sub-section (6) of the 1999 constitution as amended. There are equally the allegations of where the States governors release the LGAs funds they often direct the LGAs chairmen to payback those funds into certain unidentified accounts.

For us to get it right, we must insist on credible elections at LGAs levels. Elections at LGAs levels in Nigeria are the worst. Credible elections are very critical in ensuring Good Governance at all levels of governance not only at the LGAs levels. Arguably there is nearly no free, and fair elections in virtually all the elections conducted by the States Independent Electoral Commissions which is partly responsible for Bad Governance at the LGAs levels.

For as long as elections are not "credible" at the LGAs levels the full financial autonomy granted to the LGAs through the 11th July, 2024 Supreme Court judgement will only mean "little" or "nothing" to the LGAs administrations because the states governors will continue to "plant" and or "imposed" their "stooges" as LGAs chairmen via their usual "Kangaroo" elections being conducted by the States Independent Electoral Commissions. If this continues, even if the LGAs' allocations are directly paid into to the LGAs' accounts from the Federation Account the funds will still find its ways back to the governors through the planting of their "stooges"as product of "Kangaroo" elections.

In my view, we must as a people and as a country decide on what to do with the States Independent Electoral Commissions? Can we empower them to conduct credible elections at LGAs levels? Or we should just abolish them for INEC?

In my thought, there is a great deal of "lacuna" in the 1999 constitution which pose a "serious threat" to the development of LGAs. The LGAs are subjected to a lot of control by the states governments. For instance, the Section 7 sub-section 6 (b) of the 1999 constitution states that the House of Assembly of a state shall make provisions for statutory allocation of public revenue to local government councils within the state. Where are the LGAs legislative bodies?

Secondly, Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) is another issue. It is sad to note that from the federal, states and to the local governments we depend largely on Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) with almost modern 70% as our sources of revenues . There is a general great deal of problem on revenue generation by both the federal and the states governments much less the LGAs either due to our mono-culture economy or corruption and or both. With the exception of Lagos state there is hardly a state that can pay its monthly salaries without FAAC allocations. Majority of our states governments much less our LGAs have less than 30% as IGR contributions to their annual revenues.

States governments, especially those in the urban areas with high density economic activities are notorious in muscling LGAs from generating revenue on items; such as: motor parks, outdoor advertising, and rents etc. The function of LGAs as provided in the 5th Schedule of the 1999 constitution especially on the areas of "jurisdiction" in terms of revenue generation must be clearly amended in order to provide a clear cut areas of "jurisdiction" with those of states governments to allow the LGAs generate revenue for their development.

Thirdly, for us to get it right we really need Local Governments Reform. In fact reform in our LGAs is what we badly need, but we sadly lack. We must decide based on our peculiarities whether we still need a uniform system of local governments throughout the country or not. After all it is even a fundamental argument in federal system of government.

For instance the 23 -man 2018 APC's Committee on Restructuring headed by the former governor of Kaduna state Mal. Nasir Ahmad El-Rufa'i CON recommended that there should be no uniform system of Local Governments in the country. The committee recommended for the removal of LGAs from the 1999 constitution so that there will be no more FAAC allocations to the LGAs . The committee further recommended that states governments should determine the existence, size, and the numbers of LGAs they need in their states based on their needs, resources and or economic viability.

In conclusion, it is a fact that there are a lot of revenue leakages in the LGAs administrations. Most of our LGAs are over staffed with a lot of redundancy , truancy, workers absenteeism , low productivity and poor Internally Generated Revenues (IGRs). It is sad to note that even our states governments heavily rely on FAAC allocations much less our LGAs. Let us make our LGAs self sustaining through sound reforms. We need reforms in terms of their structure, personnel, internal revenue, and democratic governance .

There is a near "consensus" among experts and analysts that the most "dysfunctional tier" of government in Nigeria is the local government administration. It has often been described by many scholars as a "collection" or "sharing" and or "stealing" centres.

May God bless Nigeria!