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Restructuring Nigeria: On the Issue of Local Governments

One of the major points of crisis in Nigeria arising from the confusing 1999 Constitution last handed down by a departing military regime was the mauling of local governments as viable vehicles of development.

INTRODUCTION

One of the major points of crisis in Nigeria arising from the confusing 1999 Constitution last handed down by a departing military regime was the mauling of local governments as viable vehicles of development.   Listing the 774 local governments (more accurately 768 local governments in the 36 states and 6 area councils in the Federal Capital territory) by name in the Constitution appeared to congeal them in legal stone;  stipulating onerous steps to create additional local governments hardened that prospect; specifying equality of states as a major revenue allocation index made the imbalance between Northern states (19 states; 419 LGs) and Southern states (17 states; 355 LGs)  indignantly intolerable to some and financially advantageous to others;  the idea of 44 local governments in Kano (1991 Census: 5.63 million), but only 20 in Lagos (1991 Census: 5.69 million) and 9 in Bayelsa (an oil-producing state) is maddening to many.  Yet this protestation ignores the fact that Kano State is about six times the size of Lagos State.  [See Table 1.]

To add insult onto injury, the political rigmaroles of the Obasanjo administration and the National Assembly leading to postponement of local government elections from February 2002 to several dates in 2003; the eventual LG elections debacle of March  2004, and a ruling of the Supreme Court affirming strong state rights over local governments virtually killed local governments off, and left them at the mercy of the state governments, with the federal government looking helplessly on.

http://www.gamji.com/aluko/aluko15.htm      & http://www.dawodu.com/aluko9.htm  &

http://www.nigerdeltacongress.com/narticles/new_maneuvers_over_the_august_10.htm

MID-WEEK ESSAY:  Local Council Polls and INEC - A Funny Game Is Going On Here!   [April 11, 2002] with Updates

http://nigerianmuse.com/essays/?u=Confusion_political_masterpiece_LG_funds.htm

Confusion as Political Masterpiece - Supreme Court Rules on Inchoate LGs and their Impounded Funds [December 15, 2004]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3572539.stm &

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/nigeria_03-29-04.html

Local Elections Marred by Violence [March 29, 2004]

The local governments have therefore become the proverbial ants suffering under the battle between Elephant Federal Government and Elephant State Government.

But the Federal government has not quite given up: as we write, the Federal Government continues to violate a Supreme Court ruling asking it to give up statutorily allocated money (as much as N11 billion) due to Lagos State over disagreement about its unilateral creation of additional local governments.  The federal government insists that Lagos should revert to its former 20 local governments to qualify for the funds since the National Assembly has not approved the additional 37 local governments, while Lagos State insists that it is still within the law, since it is not asking for new funds for the additional LGs.

And so we watch….

Yet everyone understands that local government is the most single important vehicle for true development, particularly in a largely rural (70% rural, 30% urban-dwelling) and developing country like Nigeria:  the closer government is to the people, theoretically the more accountable it will be.

So what to do ?

SOME OBSERVATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

1.  Take Western Region:  in 1965, there were 16 administrative divisions in the entire region, with Ekiti Division being the second largest after Osun.

http://www.nigerianmuse.com/nigeriawatch/yorubawatch/?u=Divisions_and_populations_Western_Region_1965.htm

I don't quite know the further subdivisions in 1965, if any, but today, there are 16 local governments in Ekiti State alone.  The largest is Ekiti East (size 1,072 sq km, with a probably inflated population no more than 80,000), and the smallest is  Ilejemeje (size: 94 square km; population of no more than 60,000), the latter being less than one-tenth  in size of the Montgomery County (in Maryland, USA) that I currently reside in (size: 1,313 square kilometers; 2005 population estimate: 942,000; 2005/2006 budget: $3.38 billion; Maryland State budget: $25.9 billion).  Thus no one of them is probably greater than one-tenth the size of Montgomery County in population, and the smallest in area size is less than one-tenth.

http://www.nigerianmuse.com/projects/EkitiDevelopmentProject/?u=Ekiti_distribution_of_population_areas.htm

The moral of this story is that there appears to be TOO MANY local governments in Nigeria (in the sense of formal elective governance) for our size and population.   In fact, the average population covered by a local government is 115,000;  the smallest LGA is Kolokuma/Opokuma in Bayelsa State with a population of 46,877, and the largest is Ajeromi/Ifelodun in Lagos State with a population of 593,561. The area councils range in population size from 21,081 to 196,021.

    http://www.nigeriacongress.org/FGN/administrative/listlgas.asp

All of this is borne out by the fact that virtually 99% of the funds used by local governments come from the Federal government, with the states barely contributing their fair quota in violation of constitutional requirements.

2. Our military history of unitary government and episodic attempts to please local agitators made these numbers proliferate from their initial numbers  of administrative divisions to local governments.  Starting at independence with three regions (1960-1963) and then four regions (1963), 12 states were created on the eve of the Civil War (May 27, 1967)  by the Gowon regime, and seven additional states by the Murtala Mohammed regime in August 1975.  Obasanjo took over from the assassinated Mohammed in February 1976.  Starting from 301 newly-formulated LGs under General Obasanjo's local government reform program in 1976, this number  increased under General Babangida [to 449 (September 23, 1987; the number of states also increased by 2 to  a total of 21), 592 (May 3, 1989),  639 (August 27, 1991; 9 new states created for a total of 30 states) and 718 (September 23, 1991)], finally landing at the present 774  and 36 states on October 1, 1996 under General Abacha.   

Consequently, local governments became FEDERAL government affair (in creation and in funding)  rather than STATE affairs, with all the attendant negative 'remote control" effects.

This is an undesirable effect, and the demand here that the federal government significantly relax such control is a righteous one. 

The corollary of this demand for non-federal interference is an obvious one:  the number of local governments in a given state should never be used as a revenue allocation determinant to that state from the federal level.  Any new constitution should engrave those two principles.

3.  If local government is a STATE affair, then EACH state should be allowed to determine how best to (re)-structure its local governance, without dictation from the center, in consonance with STATE CONSTITUTIONS.  The only FEDERAL constitutional requirement could then be that "there must be elected local government structure within each state (minimum of five local governments (or so))", and that there would be established a local government grant fund  operated by the Federal Government that would be COMPETITIVELY applied for by the local governments, but always with state matching requirements.

4.  Given my druthers,  for a state like Ekiti State, I would bring back City (municipal) councils (for cities above a certain population), with Mayors elected on a non-party basis.  These will be funded largely from city taxes and grants from the state and federal government as City Development Areas (CDAs).

5.  Most of what are presently local governments would then be combined to take care of non-city rural areas.  So geographically, you can have many city councils within a given local government, but those councilors will not have ANY power over the city Mayor and staff, and those local governments (no more than 5) should be funded from state and federal grants really as rural development areas (RDAs).

6.  Finally, within the realms of general administration, education, social welfare,  public health, transportation, utilities, economic matters and other issues, constitutional and legislative clarity must be used to assign 'delivering authority"  either exclusively or concurrently to the various tiers of government.  [See Table 2.]  That will permit better financial revenue allocation among these tiers once and for all, in contrast to the ever-shifting and controversial distribution percentages.

http://www.nigerianmuse.com/important_documents/?u=historical_revenue_allocation_outline.htm

PROLOGUE

Again, it is important to note that in a truly federal system,  EACH state should be allowed to stipulate its local governance, peculiar to its own internal dynamics and constitution, with very loose federal guidelines (eg minimum number of local governments).  Thus my own preference (for Ekiti State) for City Councils and Rural Local Governments (or CDAs and RDAs) could be discarded or modified for other states.

Comments are welcome.

Table 1: Summary of Area, Population and LG Distribution By State in Nigeria

New States created in 1996 (1991 estimates shown in brackets in table; area, population of previous composite state existing in 1991 shown in appropriate box with composite state's name)

[1] Bayelsa from Rivers State

[2] Ebonyi from parts of Abia (currently about 5,244 km²) and Enugu States

[3] Ekiti from Ondo State

[4] Gombe from Bauchi State

[5] Nasarawa from Plateau State 

[6] Zamfara from  Sokoto State

Table 2:  Summary of service provision in different spheres of government

Source: http://www.clgf.org.uk/2005updates/Nigeria.pdf

The Local Government System in Nigeria

Other resources:

Montgomery County Services A-Z & Maryland
 http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/mcgtmpl.asp?url=/content/government/services/services.asp

http://www.gov.state.md.us/pressreleases/2005/011905_budget.html