That litigation on local government autonomy

Attorney General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi.

The litigation on ‘local government autonomy’ by the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Lateef  Fagbemi, at the Supreme Court is a frontal attack on federalism. The only federating units recognised by the 1999 Constitution (as amended) are the states. The local government areas are to be administered on the basis of laws promulgated by the respective state House of Assembly; albeit to be governed on democratic tenets.

The local government area autonomy advocacy merely seeks to undo this conventional system, and smuggle into the picture, local government areas, and thereby further strengthen the central government; which in our circumstances, is already a barracuda of sorts – already dying under its own weight. Mind you, appropriation of land – a critical resource currently held on behalf of the people in some form of fiduciary relationship by governors under the constitution – would become like a piece of cake for an intrusive Federal Government, under the planned system of local government autonomy!

Pray, what is the sense in further entrenching a system that is so thoroughly defined in injustice? Lagos State, with more than 20 million people, has 20 local government areas. Osun State, with six million people, has 30 local government areas. Ondo State, with about the same six million population, has 18 local government areas! This is just to limit ourselves to the South-West. The comparison is truly jarring when you go to what obtains across the country. Between Lagos and Kano states, for instance, you have one with 20 LGs, and the other, Kano, with 74 LGs (when you add Jigawa State that was created out of Kano). Yet, Kano and Lagos aren’t only comparable in population, they also started out with 20 LGs each, as of 1967, when all these shenanigans started. Meanwhile, the number of LGs is a basis for sharing revenue to the states from the Federation Account. It is also a determinant of the strength of representation (number of seats) in the House of Representatives. Is that a system any progressive government should be seeking to deepen? What a bunch of malarkey!

Rather than pushing to evict the LG from the constitution, and allowing the states to exercise control over the number each desires to have and fund, and how same are to be administered, we are trying to drill down further, arrant injustice.

What is more, elected representatives of the people of Nigeria, that is, the state Houses of Assembly, have voted against the idea of LG autonomy, at least thrice since 1999, because they know its hidden implications. The Federal Government takeover of the LGs, which this case is all about, is going to be the Nunc Dimittis of whatever veneer of federalism the flawed 1999 Constitution (as amended) left Nigeria with. The name of the game, for those who can see beyond the facade is, power concentration!

President Bola Tinubu, who himself as Lagos State governor, fought this iniquity on the status and place of LGs in our federation, shouldn’t be the one doing this. Rather, he should look at the obstacles that made his attempts at creating new LGs in Lagos to flounder, and push for the necessary constitutional adjustments to take care of the obstacles.

The only things that should be of concern, and on which attention should be focused, are first, that governance at the local government level be by elected leaders, only; and secondly, how to prevent state governors from wantonly dismissing elected local government area leaders, and substituting for them, caretaker committees.

In the circumstances, and at the minimum, Tinubu must pull back the Attorney General, and make him to withdraw this ill-advised legal odyssey that he is embarking upon, apparently unaware of these underlying currents. I have the confidence in making this recommendation, having noticed that the President is not one driven by ego, who’ll rather continue on a wrong path than beat a strategic retreat when the times and facts call for such. He has demonstrated this great democratic tendency variously since he came into office; and in the instant case, I presume that similar courage and public-spiritedness are also going to be projected.

The consequences attendant upon getting a ruling favourable to the Federal Government at the Supreme Court are too grave to be contemplated. We must stand up for a federal, and against a unitary Nigeria!

• Prof. Femi Mimiko can be reached via [email protected]