When local governments turn sinkholes

Of all environmental hazards any land owner or developer may encounter, none is as destructive as a sinkhole. This occurs when a portion of land which seemingly looks normal, suddenly drops down from the surrounding terrain, carrying along with it into destruction and wastage, whatever had stood on it; structures, crops, livestock and even human beings. It is worse than a drain pipe which usually has a route for directing its content. The sinkhole has only end point: disaster.
Try as much as several Nigerian leaders have done to resolve the thorny issues associated with local government administration in the country, they have always met with failure as these entities had proved to be mere sinkholes as far as the nation’s fiscal resources are concerned. While in the ordinary understanding that they are to serve as the grassroots level of government and are so funded, the cumulative stock of dividends from them with respect to service delivery,betrays most of them as just sink holes which destroy whatever of value is placed on them.
It is 40 years since 1976 when the local governments were reformed from the colonial era structure, by the military administration under General Olusegun Obasanjo. And for so long has the country remained chained to the unwillingness to adopt a decisive panacea to a problem which everybody has always known as one.
This fact is not also lost to the present administration, going by the proceedings of the recent workshop on Local government administration in the country, organized through a collaborative venture between the Daily Trust newspaper and the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) in Kuru, Jos. In his address to the forum, the Vice President Professor Yemi Osinbanjo noted that the local government system in Nigeria has failed woefully, with the individual units now serving “as mere extensions of the various state governments”. He then posited that “this government is determined to support efficiency in local government administration and the strengthening of their operational capacities”.
Good talk coming from the Vice President, even as the question remains how to actualize the expectation of the administration, which most Nigerian share with it. Interestingly participants at the Kuru workshop explored the various angles and proffered landmark recommendations in that regard. Emerging from that workshop was the accentuation of the traditional challenges associated with local government administration. Lack of autonomy, hijack by state governments and decadent leadership, deep-rooted culture of impunity and sleaze are just a few of these.
Incidentally these are the same issues that have been identified by scores of observers for the greater part of the past 41 years. That they still featured in that workshop;seemingly untouched by several generations of public policy actions, speaks volumes on the country’s willingness to leave its present level and move to a higher ground. And this is what happens when a people decide to deny themselves the substance, and embrace the shadow.
Ordinarily local governments are intended to serve as the nearest level of government presence to the people, given that they are established at the grassroots. By implication therefore that are expected to manifest the full attributes of government to the people they serve. Government is essentially created by society with the intention that it caters for every citizen within its jurisdiction from cradle to grave. The primary purpose of government therefore is to provide the enabling environment for the citizens within a jurisdiction to live a fulfilled life. It is in that context that the constitution assigns to the local government those functions that have a direct bearing on the personal lives of the citizen. And in the same vein, funds are statutorily allocated to the local governments from the consolidated revenue of the country.
However the Nigerian experience falls far short of the expectation that local governments provide the conducive environment for citizens within their areas of jurisdiction to live fulfilled lives. Rather the country is saddled with a most despicable syndrome where the local governments have become mere avenues for brazenly sharing of public funds by the opportunistic members of the political class and their cronies. It is also for the reason of its association with easy lucre that the matter of ascendancy to leadership of local government councils is usually viciously contested and often leads to death for unfortunate contestants.
A dubious variant of the ascendancy to the leadership and control of the local governments is the Caretaker Committee regime which most state governors in Nigeria have deployed perpetually to run the system within their states. Under it the local government is run by officials who are handpicked by the respective governors of the state, to whom the so appointed officials offer unalloyed loyalty; even serving as hatchet men that willingly kill to appease their sponsor potentates.
In fact as records show, not less than 400 of the 774 local governments in Nigeria today are run by Care taker Committees, while a sizeable no of them have had no fresh elections for the leadership of the councils since 1999.It is therefore easy to see why the local government system as constituted in the country remains a perpetual failure, given that its processes are driven not by the dictates of law and probity, but by the whims and caprices of individual governors and their co-travelers whose premium on patriotism is in short supply.
Borrowing from the proverb of the Niger Delta based fishermen folk of the Kalabaris that a “fish starts to rot from the head”, it is indisputable that for any reform or redemption of the nation’s local government system to be successful, such must start with addressing the question of who and what should direct the course and flow of business in the councils. Incidentally the revered former Head of the Civil Service of the Federation and former Minister of Defence Alhaji Mahmud Yayale proffered at the Kuru function,the option of abolishing the election of local government officials, and replacing such with a process of appointing well-disposed individuals with the requisite credentials, since the existing electoral process is usually hijacked by the governors to perpetuate their interests.
As well intentioned as that idea may be, its import remains a booby trap that may take the country deeper into the vortex of crisis. Throughout the history of man in society, his proclivity for self-serving capricious and whimsical tendencies have been well known. Hence the universal acceptance of the electoral process as the most dependable system for picking leaders in any political setting.
It is in that vein that the Nigerian Constitution provided for democratically elected leaders for all tiers of government in Nigeria.In fact Section 7 of the 1991 Constitution specifically recognizes local government only as ‘democratically’ elected dispensations. Yet for as long as this present democracy has lasted, monthly statutory allocations from the federation account have been shared to local governments with democratically elected leaderships and those with care taker committees, even as the later remain in the ordinary understanding of the constitution, illegal.
With the resolve of the present administration to redeem the nation’s local government system, it will do well to start with providing them with the leadership that meets with both constitutional provisions and expectations of the people. This it can do by encouraging citizen ownership of the local governments through the process of credible elections, and discouraging capricious tendencies of which the care taker committee malady is a major factor.
This is the task before the Buhari administration, if it intends to reverse the ignoble tendency of local governments in Nigeria remaining wasteful, unprogressive entities with comparable destructiveness to the nation’s economy as deep-throated sinkholes.