(1.5) The plausible argument for LG autonomy suit
It is not totally difficult to decipher why the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice filed the local government autonomy suit at the apex court against the state governments on 26 May, 2024. The removal of petrol subsidy by the Tinubu administration (all the leading presidential candidates promised to remove fuel subsidy) and subsequent floating of the Naira in order to stop arbitrage, which turned some Nigerians into overnight millionaires under the last government, led to huge rise in the cost of living.
Although the Buhari administration, through its silent but loud body language, had set the stage for food crisis, as the gun-toting herdsmen, under his watch, ravaged, WITH IMPUNITY, cities, towns, villages and hamlets across the country, especially in the North Central – the food basket of the nation – maiming, killing, raping, kidnapping for ransom, displacing farmers and, in some instances, taking over their lands. At least we all can recall how many times the farms of Chief Olu Falae, a former Finance Minister, were brutally invaded by armed herders in Ondo State. Some well-established farmers in the South had to sell off their plantations because of the fear of herdsmen; many small-holder farmers, including women, across the South had to abandon their farmlands because of endless savage attacks by herders. That was before the insecurity spread, on a large scale, to the entire North or the complicit silence of the last government boomeranged!
EXPOSED!! POPULAR ABUJA DOCTOR REVEALED HIDDEN SECRET ON HOW MEN CAN NATURALLY AND PERMANENTLY CURE POOR ERECTION,QUICK EJACULATION, SMALL AND SHAMEFUL MANHOOD WITHOUT SIDE EFFECTS. EVEN IF YOU ARE HYPERTENSIVE OR DIABETIC ..STOP THE USE OF HARD DRUG FOR SEX!! IT KILLS!
However, the petrol subsidy removal immediately led to humongous monthly allocations to the federating states and local councils. Rather than the citizens turning also to their state governments and demand explanation for the hardship being experienced, they blamed the Federal Government for everything! Worse, the so-called food palliatives being distributed by the governments only reached a tiny percentage of the poor, making the policy questionable. In one local government, 36 cups of rice were allocated to an entire Ward. One resident then cynically suggested that the palliative be shared in single grains so that each member of the Ward would at least collect a grain of rice! In majority of states, apart from those given out openly by state officials ‘for the cameras and media attention’, nearly all the bags of grains sent by the Federal Government to alleviate the hardship of the masses ended up in government warehouses, shops and homes of politicians!
The Conditional Cash Transfer programme was even more questionable because of its inherent injustice, as only a meagre percentage of the poor could access it. This is apart from the corrupt tendencies of its supervising officials. How could a public official, without providing details, openly claim she fed school children at home during the COVID-19 lockdown or that over 1.5 million poor households, majority of whom had no bank accounts, received N20,000 each under the Conditional Cash Transfer programme within two months?!
Rather than stimulate the local economy or allow the trickle-down effects through projects by local governments (carpentry, bricklaying, road construction and rehabilitation, welding, transport and catering services, etc., etc.), there was ALLEGATION that many state officials diverted the allocations to the black market hence the sudden slump of the Naira in the Forex market shortly after every FAAC’s meeting. There was, however, the counter ALLEGATION that many federal officials were guiltier of the same offence since the Federal Government received more allocation than all the states and local governments combined.
Proved or not, the established evidence across majority of the 774 local councils in the country showed that council officials collected monthly salaries and then returned home to sleep since state governments had taken over their mandates and hamstrung them financially. This was unlike the situation in the 50s, 60s… when local councils were involved in massive public works, education and public health, and were paying salaries of workers and contractors as and when due – the golden era of Nigeria!
Therefore, the plausible argument that propelled the local government autonomy suit was the need to stimulate local economy and reduce the hardship of the citizens, hence the nation-wide euphoria that greeted the Supreme Court decision on 11 July, 2024. (I should add somewhat in passing, only passing, that the local council civil servants – especially primary school teachers and health workers that witnessed the era of direct allocation to local councils from the Federation Account – did not rejoice at the judgement of the apex court, as they were owed, regularly, many months of salaries. Some small-scale contractors at the receiving end of the malfeasance of many council officials in the era of direct allocation did not welcome the decision of the Supreme Court. Again, this is just in parenthesis!)
As earlier stated, I am not oblivious of the country-wide ecstasy occasioned by the verdict of the Supreme Court of 11 July, 2024.
However, the Chief Justice Taft of the United States Supreme Court, in Bailey v Drexel Furniture Co 259 US (1922) at page 450, had this to say:
“We cannot avoid the duty, even though it requires us to refuse to give effect to legislation designed to promote the highest good. The good sought in unconstitutional legislation is an insidious feature because it leads citizens and legislators of good purpose to promote it without thought of the serious breach it will make in the ark of our covenant or the harm which will come from the breaking down of recognised standards. In the maintenance of local self-government, on the one hand, and the national power, on the other, our country has been able to endure and prosper for nearly a century and a half.”
As earlier submitted, the medicine for headache is not to cut off the head! We should not indulge in cutting our nose to spite our face!We cannot advocate devolution of powers and at the same time laud the Supreme Court judgement that concentrates more powers at the centre!This is a heterogeneous country; I do not want a Federal Government that will control the air I breathe in my village. In a federation, local government matters are the exclusive preserve of state or regional governments. Revenue allocation should be between the federal and state governments. It is the responsibility of the House of Assembly of a state or region to allocate revenue to the local councils. A state government can choose to turn every household within its territory into a local council; all politics and development then truly become local, as it was in the first republic!
In his book, My Life, published in 1962 when Lagos was the seat of the Federal Government, the Sardauna of Sokoto, Ahmadu Bello, argued strenuously against centralisation or unitary system: “It is only since we set up a Regional Government and got away from the shadow of the Lagos Government… that we have made real and substantial progress in this country… Though we formed part of the Federation, the latter had no control over our administration and internal affairs, and to the man in the street the Federation is a long way off and more than nebulous. Thus, what happened in Lagos (the Federal capital) was not of great consequence here in the North.”
“Our own stand in this matter is well known,” wrote Chief Obafemi Awolowo in his 1966 book, Thoughts on the Nigerian Constitution. “We belong to the federalist school… Any experiment with a unitary constitution…must fail, in the long run… Since Nigeria is a multilingual and multinational country par excellence, the only constitution that is suitable for its peculiar circumstances is a federal constitution.”
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(1.6) Conclusions
(a) The defendants (state governments) should file an application urging the Supreme Court to reverse itself, as its 11 July, 2024 decision, manifestly, was given per incuriam. Its judgement in local government autonomy suit is a blatant erosion of the federal principle. Local administration is an exclusive preserve of the state government, controlled by laws enacted by the state legislature.
“Justices of this Court (Supreme Court) are human beings, capable of erring,” wrote the lateJustice Chukwudifu Oputa of the Supreme Court in Adegoke Motors vs. Adesanya, [1989] 13 NWLR, pt.109, 250 at page 275. “It will certainly be short-sighted arrogance not to accept this obvious truth. It is also true that this Court can do inestimable good through its wise decisions. Similarly, the Court can do incalculable harm through its mistakes. When, therefore, it appears to learned counsel that any decision of this Court has been given per incuriam, such counsel should have the boldness and courage to ask that such a decision be overruled. This Court has the power to overrule itself (and has done so in the past); for it gladly accepts that it is far better to admit an error than to persevere in error.”
(b) All policy choices should be directed towards strengthening the federal structure of Nigeria. Local government has no place in a federal constitution and must be removed from the current 1999 Constitution. The Federal Government has to devolve powers and financial resources to the states or regions, as was the case in the first republic, before the ill-advised military incursion into political governance. (On revenue allocation, see Sections 136 to 145 of the Constitution of the Federation, 1963). Every state or region should have the constitutional power to exploit its natural resources for the benefit of its citizens and contribute also to the ‘national cake’, hence mines and minerals should be removed from the Exclusive List of the Constitution. The gains of the railway system under the Buhari administration, especially the milestone removal of railway from the Exclusive List to the Concurrent List, should be expanded.
The Federal Government should shed weight with concomitant reduction in the 54% allocation it receives from the Federation Account. (30% to FG, 70% to the 36 states and FCT could be recommended, in the interim). The Federal Government is over-bloated and has a finger in every pie. Imagine the hundreds of agencies under its control! We get to hear about a good number of these cost centres during the budget defence after which they disappear totally from public consciousness until the next budget cycle! As far back as 1972, Walter Rodney, the author of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, had lamented: “It has been noted with irony that the principal ‘industry’ of many underdeveloped countries is administration!”
Like other federations, the Federal Government should concern itself with only core federal matters such as defence, external affairs, currency and customs. There should be state/ local police with the power of control vested in the three organs of government. It is high time state Appeal Court and Supreme Court were established. It beats imagination why a monarch or chieftaincy tussle in a remote village in a federating state should get to the Federal Supreme Court in Abuja! It is not surprising we have about 250,000 cases pending in our various superior courts of record! Which rational investor will like a jurisdiction where a business dispute from the High Court to the Supreme Court takes 20 or 30 years to be concluded?
The federal roads should revert to the state governments. Two or more states can easily collaborate to construct the federal roads. It is gross administrative inefficiency and a colossal waste of resources for a distant Abuja-based Ministry of Works to construct or repair a federal road that passes through a remote village, located in a state and a local government! Nigeria is probably the only federation in the world where the central government, in peace time, travels thousands of kilometres from the seat of power to sink a borehole or construct a health centre in a remote village that has a state government and a local government! It is laughable; imagine the amount of administrative cost involved!
A winner-take-all and costly presidential system is not sustainable. A return to parliamentary system of government is an imperative in order to reduce the political temperature, cut-throat politics, cost of governance, cost of elections and corruption. The three arms of government should jointly exercise the power to hire and fire the chairman and members of the electoral commission, both at the federal and state levels.
The National Assembly should deploy its energies along these lines, rather than playing to the gallery, chasing the wind, in a misguided attempt to implement a precipitous judgement of the Supreme Court, which undermines our federalism and promotes a unitary system.
(c) With regards to the present food crisis, the Federal Government (through the National Economic Council) should reach an agreement with the state governments to set aside a huge percentage of the monthly allocations, which would be deployed to turning every inch of the Nigerian land into a farmland and an agro-processing hub within six months, and provide (off-grid) power supply across the nook and cranny of the country within 36 months. The security agencies must be motivated to end the menace of the gun-toting herdsmen and bandits in every hamlet, village and towns in the country with deliberate speed.
Since nearly all the poor people, especially in the South and Middle Belt, have children in public primary schools – even up to remote villages – perhaps one of the major ways to lessen the burden of the greatest number of the masses, at this difficult period, is to look in the direction of complete and total free education (free textbooks, free uniform; NO PAYMENT IN ANY FORM) in primary (and possibly secondary) schools. The hybrid education system in the core North with complete free education and free school feeding could be a better option.
(d) Citizens must insist on democratic government and defend it at all costs. It rankles that military intervention halted the march of progress of this country. The three regions (later four), with the local councils under them, were progressing at varying speeds, with healthy rivalries centred on which region was first to deliver the greatest good to the greatest number of their citizens. In spite of the political challenges, if we had continued on such a development trajectory without the misguided interruption of January 15, 1966, we should have been like one of the Asian Tigers at this period. I should have more to say in the future on how this country was brought to complete ruin through military coups and counter coups. But for now, the federal principle, which enables each state or region to develop at their own pace, should be the cornerstone of our union.
