On Thursday, July 11, 2024, the Supreme Court of Nigeria delivered a landmark judgment on financial autonomy of Nigeria’s 774 Local Government Councils, declaring that it is unconstitutional for state governors to hold their allocated funds.
Delivering judgment in suit SC/CV/343/2024 filed by the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice against the 36 state governors, the seven-man panel led by Justice Emmanuel Agim declared: “I hold that the state’s retention of the local government funds is unconstitutional. Demands of justice require a progressive interpretation of the law. It is the position of this court that the federation can pay LGA allocations to the LGAs directly or pay them through the states.
“In this case, since paying them through states has not worked, justice of this case demands that LGA allocations from the federation account should henceforth be paid directly to the LGAs”.
Declaring that government is divided into three tiers – federal, state, and local governments, the court stated: “A democratically elected local government is sacrosanct and non-negotiable,” effectively putting an end to state governors’ penchant of appointing caretaker committees to run the councils.
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Affirming that “the states by the abuse of their power have worked against this law,” the court said the act of dissolving democratically elected local government councils to replace them with caretaker committees “is unlawful, unconstitutional, null and void”.
Already, some Nigerians and interest groups have hailed the judgment, while others fear that it may weaken Nigeria’s constitutional democracy, especially the balance of power between the centre and the sub-nationals in terms of the federal structure of the country.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu said that “by virtue of this judgment, our people, especially the poor, will be able to hold their local leaders to account for their actions and inactions and stands as a resounding affirmation that we can use legitimate means of redress to restructure our country and restructure our economy to make Nigeria a better place to live in, a fairer society for all of our people.”
Surprisingly, the governors who were obviously at the receiving end of the verdict, also welcomed it. Chairman of their umbrella body, Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF), AbdulRasaq AbdulRahman, said: “We welcome the ruling of the Supreme Court. Compliance is given and our Attorneys-General have applied for the enrollment order, which we will study. But by and large, governors are happy with the devolution of power in respect of the local government autonomy. It has relieved the burden on governors. Our people really don’t know how much states expend in bailing out local governments and that is the issue.”
Indeed, our local government system has faced monumental abuses by successive governments over time, whether military or civil rule. This tier of government’s sanctity has been serially abused. Now, with this judgment, the time has come to change the reality that since the advent of this democratic dispensation on May 29, 1999, hardly had a political party outside that of the governors in each of the 36 states ever been allowed to win as a councillor or local government chairman. And nobody has ever emerged a candidate of the governor’s party without his nod.
We at Daily Trust applaud the judgment as victory for democracy. It is a welcome development which puts an end to the larceny that has emasculated the third tier of government and will help to enthrone fiscal independence of the 774 LGs.
For too long, state governors have held local government funds captive under their suffocating stranglehold of joint account, releasing what pleases them. And when it pleased them, they conduct sham elections through their inept state electoral commissions with their lackeys triumphing all the way. Indeed, this is time for a fresh breath for the LGs.
For the emerging Local Government Council leaderships, they should wake up and ensure that they live up to the expectations of the people. They have been sleeping for a long time and this is a wake-up call for them to show that they are equal to the task of providing leadership and development at the local level, as the third tier of government.
The councils must ensure that there are no diversion of funds or looting of salaries and allowances of their staff. They should start impacting their communities in terms of infrastructural projects at the grassroots.
The new era calls for the emerging local government chairmen and councillors to discard their wimpy behaviours and muster the courage to live up to the expectations of the framers of the Constitution and their people.
We also call on state governors to immediately implement the judgment through conduct of local government elections that should be free, fair, and credible.
Most importantly, the people must monitor and guard the victory religiously. The era of local governments being governed with business as usual approach should be over. They must now be held accountable as they deliver service to the people.
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