President Muhammadu Buhari, uncharacteristically, recently gave vent to his frustrations with the state governors because of what they are doing to the local governments. He accused them of stealing the shares of the local governments from the federation account and thus rendering the third tier of government virtually inoperative. He could have gone further to tell them that they have successively and systematically destroyed the local government system and impaired their capacity as the government closest to the people.
The howls of protests by their excellencies were not unexpected. The president spoke truth to power and the power found it grated on its ears. The governors constitute the single most powerful political power block in the country today. Even a president needs no one to tell him that there is obvious risk and danger in telling them the truth about themselves. The governors are, if you need to be reminded, executive governors with full executive powers to even pack the executive council of the federation.
Buhari said what the people had suspected all along but were too afraid to give voice to. It would be foolish to dispute the fact that the local governments system is no longer working. Starved of funds by the state governors and packed with their political thugs parading themselves as executive chairmen, the local government system is unable to fulfil its constitutional mandate of grassroots or local administration to complement what the federal and state governments are doing. Their destruction is destructive of our system of government. It is to be regretted.
Buhari knew what was happening to the local governments long before he assumed power in 2015. At his inauguration on May 29, 2015, he said: “Constitutionally there are limits to the powers of each of the three tiers of government but that should not mean the Federal Government should fold its arms and close its eyes to what is going on in the states and local governments. Not least the operations of the Local Government Joint Account.”
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I welcomed his intention to make the constitution serve the people by ensuring that its provisions are not a hindrance to the full flowering of a system of government in which power is given by the people for the people. Taking refuge under a constitutional lacuna to watch things go wrong is deleterious to the health of our constitutional government.
If the president looked over the shoulders of the state governors, much good would result from his shining light on the sordid happening at the state and local government levels and save our democracy from going down as a government of powerful thieves by powerful thieves for powerful thieves.
The local government system has been a source of some controversies since the reforms were instituted in the second republic. The operation of the local governments was equally a source of worry to some of Buhari’s predecessors in office. Each of them tried to make the local governments functional in accordance with their constitutional mandate.
President Ibrahim Babangida believed that flowing from the local government reforms of 1976, local governments were intended to be autonomous entities as full third tiers of government funded from the federation account like the federal and state governments. His own additional reforms set the local governments free from the total control of the state governments with his abolition of the ministries for local governments. Money was paid directly to the local governments.
But as often happens in our country, this policy was short-lived. The constitutional mandates state governors to constitute local government accounts committees to which local government shares from the federation are paid and disbursed in abbreviated form at the instance of the state governors.
President Obasanjo decided the way to stop the governors from stealing local government funds was to let the public know what each tier of government received from the federation account each month. He instructed his minister of finance, Dr Okonjo-Iweala, to publish federal, state, and local government shares from the federation account each month. If the people knew how much their state and local governments received each month, it would embolden them to demand accountability. The beetle has more lives than you can imagine.
Buhari tried to do it differently. A couple of years or so ago, he issued an executive order by-passing the local government joint accounts committees and release money directly from the federation account to the local governments. His intention met a granite wall and, unable to break through, crumbled. The provisions of the local government joints accounts committee stopped the president in his tracks. For the executive order to work, that constitutional provision as it relates to the local government joint accounts committee needs to be amended. Buhari, wisely, did not take up that option because he knew he would meet the governors manning the barricades to protect what is more in their interest than of the system. Pity the president. He finds himself helplessly continuing to watch with mounting frustration as the state governors continue to service the local governments with their abbreviated shares from the federation account.
The problems of the local governments are much greater than the sum of the theft of their funds by the state governors. There are fundamental issues that cannot be resolved by stopping the state governors from stealing the money. Stealing the money cripples the local government administration but the critical problems we pretend do not exist have birthed a confused system of a simple grassroots administration.
In my earlier column in which I appealed to Buhari to save the local governments, I wrote:
“When Buhari looks into what is happening at the local government level, I presume he would be surprised to see that a) the third tier of government lacks a clear system of administration, b) the constitution is mealy-mouthed about the local government system c) the functions the constitution purports to assign to the local governments in the Fourth Schedule are hopelessly irrelevant to a modern government and d) the president will come face to face with one more anomaly in the nature and the operation of our federalism.”
Buhari’s frustration with the state governors over the local government funds should compel us to critically re-examine the local government system and address some issues that have arisen from their operation in the hands of the state governors. If we are passionate about good and effective grassroots administration, then we should do much better than leave things as they are because they can only get worse.
(To be concluded)
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