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THEY have done their duty, or what they consider to be one of their duties. I mean members of the National Assembly (NASS), which is made up of the House of Representatives and the Senate. ‘Anagh eji ututu ama njo ahia’ or morning is not often a description of how the day went. Not so in the case of Nigeria’s 10th national assembly.
The direction of the NASS has been very clear from the beginning. The handpicked leadership composition (by Nigerian President, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu) left no one in doubt about its setup. The NASS chairman had the alleged corruption case of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) swirling around him right up to the time he took the oath of office as Senate President. Obong Godswill Akpabio was an unusual two-term governor of Akwa Ibom State with an ‘unusual’ record. He was a federal republic minister who made an unusual revelation at a national assembly session that caused the hounds to shout ‘off the mic’ in the heat of the session. The House committee hearing was broadcast live on national television and the committee members were determined to stop Nigerians from hearing and knowing that they (the representatives and senators) were part of the rot in the corrupt Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC). On another day on the same issue, the then head of the intervention agency had to faint when bombarded with questions about the ugliness in the organization.
There is a cliche that says birds of a feather flock together. Like breeds like. Show me your friends and I will tell you who you are. So the leadership of the national assembly was shaped in the image of the leadership of the Executive branch of the Nigerian government. And Nigerians lived that experience.
The presidential system of government that we claim to have borrowed from the United States is designed with hidden, subtle and sometimes overt tensions between the three co-equal branches of government – the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary. The tensions are often more pronounced between the Executive and Parliament. But this is not the case in our country. In the last 25 years, the propensity for parliament to exercise its autonomy has been far and between. The closest Nigeria came to experiencing NASS independence was when Dr. Olusola Saraki was Senate President and NASS Chairman during the first term (2015-2019) of Nigeria’s suffering President, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari. It must be said that it did not happen intentionally. It was the result of a personal plot to seize power and control the direction of the regime.
The current NASS leadership has been vocal about its subordination to the president so that if the will of the Nigerian people is to be fulfilled, it will only be to the extent that the will of the Nigerian people is in line with the will of the president who appointed them to office. In other words, if the will of the citizens is at odds with the will of the president, the will of the people will be invalid to the extent that it is at odds with Tinubu’s will. And this has been demonstrated on more than one occasion in the last 14 months of this administration. In short, we are living in an era of government by the president, for the president. Civilian dictatorship is in full swing at the federal level.
So, we can only hope for some resistance at the subnational level. However, it is important to realize that even if we expect resistance, state governors are no better when it comes to displaying democratic temperament. Many of them are apprentice dictators waiting to bloom. If you want to know their grip, visit any state when the governor is not in town. Nothing in the way of governance and governance happens. The lieutenant governor who is supposed to act in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution in the governor’s absence is paralyzed and powerless. Anything the lieutenant governor does is interpreted as an attempt to outmaneuver the governor and a display of over-ambition and overreach. It is rare for a governor and his lieutenant who are supposed to be elected on a joint ticket to complete their term together. Some governors have used and disposed of, through impeachment, as many as three lieutenant governors in two eight-year terms. That is a story for another time.
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For today’s discourse, we will pretend to believe that the dictatorial tendencies of state governors can be put to good use for once and for the benefit of the Nigerian people. It can be used to counter the various schemes that are ongoing for the so-called local government council reform. The approaches may be diverse but they all come from the same source – the president. First, the president went to the Supreme Court to sue the states, saying he wanted the court to rule on the financial and administrative autonomy of the 774 local government areas in Nigeria. He also said he wanted the Supreme Court to rule that no state government has the power to arbitrarily terminate the tenure of elected local councils. He also asked the court to authorize him to confiscate federal allocations to any council not run by elected officials and to wipe out joint state/council bank accounts that governors use as slush funds. Ordinarily, these are noble goals that should excite every citizen. But not so fast because in this dispensation there is nothing ordinary. The second route the president is using to take over local government areas (LGAs) for himself is through the national assembly. Last week, media reports said that the NASS has given full financial and administrative autonomy to all the boards by amending section 124 of the Constitution. The report said that the section makes consequential provisions to make the boards a full-fledged third tier of government without undue interference from the state governments. The House and Senate, the news report said, have reconciled their differences on the issue and the bill will be forwarded to the state assemblies for approval by at least two-thirds of the legislatures of the 36 states.
This is the stage where the governors must use their dictatorial powers to pressure their assemblies to reject the amendment. The governors need little encouragement, or any encouragement at all, because they have at least once in the past thwarted similar amendments. They did it to further their selfish interests and there is nothing to suggest that they will not do it again this time. While the governors’ motivations for rejecting the local government areas amendment bill are clearly personal and selfish, it will ultimately serve the common interest of Nigerians. Making the existing 774 council areas a third tier of government, financially and administratively autonomous presupposes that they are component units of the Nigerian federation. They are not. And they should not be. We will be the first to admit that our federation is awkward but we must not allow our short-sighted rulers to continue to make an already bad situation worse.
For starters, the names of the current 774 council areas should not have been written into the 1999 Constitution. So if any amendment is needed to reform the structure and administration of local government in Nigeria, it should immediately remove the councils from the federal Constitution. States should be free to create administrative units at the local level, and to create as many as they wish and to fund them. It is absurd to argue in a federal system of government that local councils should receive statutory allocations from the federation account.
The legacy of long military rule has caused significant damage to our country, including the arbitrary formation of states. However, even more serious damage occurred in the separation of local government areas. There are some parts of the country where local government areas have very few residents. These areas are just vast expanses of land with sparse settlements in fragile houses.
It is this arbitrary creation of states and local governments that has led to the absurdity of the current situation in old Kano state and Lagos state. We almost sound like a broken record but we will not stop illustrating it. Lagos state and old Kano state had almost the same population. Later, Jigawa state was carved out of Kano state. Lagos remained unchanged. Today Kano and Jigawa states have a combined 71 local government areas while Lagos state has 20. As a result, old Kano state gets 71 separate allocations from the federation account while Lagos only gets 20. That means the federal allocation to old Kano state is three and a half times more than Lagos. Where is the justice? Where is the equity? Where is the fairness?
Unfortunately, the man who now resides in Aso Rock Villa as Nigeria’s president was the governor of Lagos state some two decades ago. He had a falling out with the then president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, over the creation of local government. Tinubu created 37 additional council areas for Lagos. Obasanjo withheld federal allocation for 20 constituencies, saying the funds could be used by Tinubu to fund his 37 newly created areas that were not recognized in the Constitution. The matter ended up in the Supreme Court with each side claiming victory.
So, if Tinubu claimed over 20 years ago that local governments should be the exclusive property of the states, and he stood on solid ground, why is the same man using trickery (litigation in the Supreme Court and legislation through NASS) to force administrative autonomy for the councils and their financial independence from the state governments? Doesn’t this confirm that he is an opportunist and a pseudo-democrat? However, he will not fail to act on what he typed. In 2012, Tinubu wrote a letter to former president, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, about the dangers of removing subsidies on petroleum products. He was absolutely right. However, in 2023, he did the opposite of what he warned about, and plunged the economy into poverty and the people into poverty. The same is true in local government, the same is true in removing petrol subsidies. Tinubu’s reputation as dishonest, unreliable and an opportunist is clear. However, he can still atone for his mistake by working with state governors and the national assembly to do the right thing for local governments – cut their ties with the federal government, remove their names from the Constitution, let the states form as many councils as they want and fund them. Manipulating local governments for personal, political and electoral reasons is not in the best interest of our distorted and troubled federation.
AUTHOR: UGO ONUOHA
Articles published on our Graffiti section are solely the opinions of the authors and do not represent the views of Ripples Nigeria or its editorial stance.
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