By Palladium
Of all the local government elections held so far, none has recorded a close contest between leading political parties, whether the poll was a two-horse race, as is common in the country, or a three-horse race where a fringe party has managed to barge itself into the ‘dinner’ party. In most cases, the victorious parties, usually the ruling parties, have made a clean sweep of the polls, regardless of how ‘progressive’ the governors are thought to be or whether the 2023 National Assembly polls were keenly contested with very narrow margins and outcomes. All that is needed for a clean sweep is for a party to produce the governor of the state.
Yet, the philosophy behind the federal government’s laborious effort to secure financial autonomy – not administrative autonomy – for the LGs was to introduce accountability, efficiency, development and innovation at the grassroots level. State governments had consistently stifled the LGs, the so-called third tier, and reduced them to beggars. Arguing that the LGs were often irresponsible or incompetent, the states had defied the constitution and taken over everything about the councils, leaving them no elbow room to prove themselves in governance. In fact, in most states until the Supreme Court waded in last July, local government elections had not been held for years. And when the Supreme Court gave judgement in favour of freeing the finances of the LGs, the states ungraciously began to look for ways of sabotaging the freedom. Their reaction was predictable.
This column warned immediately after the judgement that given the disposition of the states, particularly governors unconvinced about the societal and economic value of fairly independent LGs, it was a matter of time before they caught their breath and began to look for ways to circumvent the ruling. Shockingly, the governors were even more spontaneous than this column feared. They simply enacted the cleanest sweep of LG polls ever, without scruples, without remorse. States like Rivers and Kano where the Federal High Court had issued orders barring the elections from holding, and where the electorate were split almost 50-50, simply brushed aside the judgements and conjured a clean sweep. No courts and no constitution were big enough to hold them down.
Since 1999, the governors have always been very influential. President Olusegun Obasanjo tried to curb their mafia-like politics, but failed. And with the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, nothing they imagined was impossible to them. No other president since has succeeded in taming them. One after another, the presidents simply relented and let the governors run riot over national affairs. President Bola Tinubu tried to reach for the stars by going through the courts to clip the governors’ wings, but from all indications, he has also come to grief. The governors won’t fight him openly, but they will make nonsense of his judicial overreach. Anambra has even tested the waters by railroading through the state legislature an insolent piece of legislation to rubbish the Supreme Court ruling on the matter. Whichever way the judgement is read, and whoever gets the LGs money first, the inventive Anambra law provides that a certain undetermined percentage would be shaved off the councils’ allocations.
The Supreme Court judgement may not be dead yet, but it is in intensive care already. The judges had claimed to deploy purposive and teleological arguments to underpin and give assent to the financial autonomy the constitution meant for the LGs. It was a beautiful piece of judicial innovation and imaginativeness, a judgement highly welcomed by the populace, and a shot in the arm to revivify somnolent or dying LGs. Seething governors waited only a moment to catch their breath before launching a fierce counterattack. Knocked insensate, the federal government, Supreme Court, and tremulous LGs have been put on the back foot by the counterattacks; and so far, they have been unable to inspire a riposte. Indeed, while the Tinubu administration and allied forces were left reeling, the governors, through the National Economic Council (NEC), attempted to deal a vicious uppercut to the Tax Bill before the National Assembly. The bill has about four of five parts, almost flawless and an ingenious piece of legislation, but the governors, seizing upon the Value Added Tax (VAT) component of an otherwise great and carefully worked bill, will have none of it.
If the Fourth Republic is failing to meet expectations, the practitioners, particularly the governors, are to blame. As defective as the 1999 Constitution is, it is not so irredeemable that it cannot produce the great leap forward its overly optimistic framers dreamt. It may not rise to the philosophical height of the American original from which it was plagiarised, nor take into cognisance the cultural and political milieux on which it has been clumsily grafted, but it provides a rudimentary enough structure to help Nigeria forge ahead, not briskly, but at least gingerly.
LGs are the first and primary victims of the constitutional and administrative anomalies of the Fourth Republic. If the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which promises to monitor council expenditures and take action against infractions, will approach the conflict with the tentativeness it has handled ex-governor Yahaya Bello’s intransigence, then nothing will come out of the political and constitutional subterfuge being masterminded by the governors. Lagos State legislature is finding a controversial way to get round the state’s inchoate local council development areas; but it has mercifully tamed its latent potential for radicalism by not trying to subvert the rule of law, nor egregiously bypass the Supreme Court judgement like a few other states. But few states can really do without the local government allocations; it is a juicy extra they are loth to wean themselves off.
For now, the LGs are hanging by their toes. They are in far more trouble than anyone thought. The governors resent any whiff of independence coming from that obstreperous tier. They will fight the court’s effrontery to the bitter end. Whether they will get away with it or not is unclear, and whether the federal government will rally to take the battle to the governors is also not certain. But instead of the judicial and political rigmarole being deployed to solve a rather simple problem made complex by a unitary constitution pretending to be federalist, economic federalism in which states and LGs independently generate their own revenue would be the smartest and lasting solution to obliterate any clamour for monthly allocations.
Credit: The Nation
