By Palladium
Anambra State governor Chukwuma Soludo last Tuesday signed into law the contrapuntal Anambra Local Government Administration Bill 2024. He rests his assent on Section 7 of the 1999 Constitution, insisting that it complements or ‘operationalises’ rather than undermines the Supreme Court judgement on local government financial autonomy. Last July the top court had severed the LGs finances from the state’s umbilical cord. But judging by the prevarications of Prof. Soludo, the LGs could not be trusted with full autonomy. It is not clear where he read that the Supreme Court ordered the full autonomy of the LGs.
In the Anambra LG law, the joint state and LG account bypassed by the Supreme Court in granting financial autonomy to the local governments has been reinstated in Sections 13 and 14 of the new law, and deductions of a certain percentage in favour of the state is also authorised. It is a complete return to status quo. How Prof. Soludo creatively interpreted the defiant Anambra LG law to be complementary to the Supreme Court judgement is hard to understand. However, the Anambra LGs are unlikely to challenge their re-enslavement. They are as impotent as the House of Assembly which railroaded the bill into law in a matter of days.
Prof. Soludo also hinges his action on sustaining the financial sanity he had managed to reintroduce into LG finances. If states could not be trusted over the years to maintain integrity in handling their joint accounts with LGs as provided for in the constitution, why do governors expect LGs to operate above suspicion? The Anambra LG law does not indicate the percentage to be deducted, and just in case in the future the state receives the allocation on behalf of the LGs, the undetermined percentage would be deducted at source. This amounts to a contemptuous dismissal of the court judgement.
Prof. Soludo has drawn a line in the sand with his subterfuge, and dares any LG to cross it. If half of Anambra LGs had been won by opposition parties, would he be as eager to challenge the Supreme Court judgement? And if instead of the abominable revenue allocations from the centre the LGs had generated their own revenue, would the governor impound their money? The Anambra governor is seen as one of the promising faces of democracy, but like his fellow governors, he is squabbling needlessly over free LG revenue rather than agitating for truly beneficial and lasting financial federalism. Clearly the emancipation of LGs is still a long way off, particularly in the face of the continuing controversy over how many tiers of government should actually federate in Nigeria.
Credit: The Nation
