Despite decades of local government reforms since 1976, the 1999 Constitution and political interference by state governors have left councils financially and politically dependent. While the Supreme Court affirmed LG financial autonomy in 2024, implementation remains stalled due to constitutional hurdles and resistance from states. PHILIP IBITOYE examines the issues forestalling local government progress.
The showdown between the Osun State Government and the Federal Government over the seizure of monthly Local Government (LG) revenue allocations to the state has reignited conversations around the elusive autonomy of local councils in Nigeria. The trouble in Osun started in November 2022 when a Federal High Court sitting in Osogbo, the state capital, nullified the October 2022 LG elections conducted by the Osun State Independent Electoral Commission (OSIEC). The presiding judge, Justice Nathaniel Ayo-Emmanuel, in his judgment, said the election was held in contravention of Sections 29 & 32 of the Electoral Act, 2022. The decision kicked out members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) who won all the seats in the 30 LGAs unopposed.
However, on February 10, 2025, the Court of Appeal issued a ruling which the APC interpreted as reinstating its officials and setting aside the 2022 lower court ruling. But the People’s Democratic Party (PDP)-controlled state government disagreed, saying the Certified True Copy (CTC) of the ruling shows that the appellate court did not treat the merit of the case. While the court granted some prayers sought by the APC, it refused others, including prayer G, where the party prayed the court for reinstatement. The judgment has since become a political instrument allegedly being wielded by powerful politicians bent on reclaiming Osun by hook or crook.
Even legal experts have offered conflicting interpretations of the Court of Appeal judgment. While Mike Ozekhome, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and a Professor of Constitutional Law, said the appellate court did not reinstate the sacked APC LG chairmen, Monday Ubani (SAN), a former Vice-President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), said the court validated the election of the LG chairmen, agreeing with the interpretation of the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), who has also come under the heavy hammer of some legal minds, who faulted his interpretation of that judgment.
The APC-led Federal Government, relying on the AGF legal opinion, subsequently seized LG allocations to Osun, eliciting angry reactions from stakeholders, including the state governor, Ademola Adeleke, and the NBA, which has described the continued withholding of funds as “unconstitutional, unlawful and a dangerous affront to the rule of law.”
In an interview with Sunday Tribune, the National Vice Chairman (South West) of the PDP, Kamoru Toyese Ajisafe, said Osun was in serious pain over the seizure of LG funds. While the current withholding of funds in the state is not directly tied to the autonomy question, it is a manifestation of a defective system that places the responsibility of holding local council elections in the hands of state governors who are often not honest actors, according to governance experts. This defective system has been a source of worry for successive administrations, military and civil, for several decades.
Long history of failed LG reforms
In preparation for the return to civil rule, the Federal Military Government embarked on a reform effort in 1976. The effort was aimed at rationalising and stabilising government at the local level as well as stimulating democratic self-governance and encouraging initiative and leadership potential at the grassroots level. It was this reform that resulted in the recognition of the local government as the third tier of government and beneficiary of some measure of autonomy. However, this reform failed to entrench autonomous local governance across the country, resulting in the appointment of the Dasuki Local Government Review Committee by Head of State, Major General Muhammadu Buhari, on May 7, 1984. While the Dasuki committee report concluded that the public was dissatisfied with the local government structure, it observed that the problems of local governance were largely “operational” failures by local officials. Like its predecessor, the Dasuki committee report fell short of expectations and instead of making local governance more independent of the state, it might have increased state domination, according to a former vice-president, Yemi Osinbajo.
Recognising that local governments lacked the autonomy to properly operate and dispense governance to the grassroots, Buhari’s successor, Ibrahim Babangida, embarked on his own reform in 1986. The reform committee was mandated to identify a basic philosophy of government which would determine goals and guide governance. While this reform, like others before it, focused on improving the internal management of local governments, the guarantee of local autonomy was central to the effort. In 1988, Babangida said: “Local government will be given the necessary freedom and autonomy to operate within the ambits of the constitution, not as a mere adjunct to the states but as a truly coordinate and effective level of government.”
1999 constitution as roadblock to local government autonomy
The Babangida reforms were codified into the Local Government (Basic Constitutional and Transitional Provisions) Decree No. 32 of 1989, but if any progress was made, much of it was erased when the 1999 Constitution took effect, according to legal experts and political analysts. They argue that Section 7 of the 1999 Constitution, which provides that “…the Government of every State shall… ensure [the existence of democratically elected local government councils] under a Law which provides for the establishment, structure, composition, finance and functions of such councils…” allows states, not the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), to conduct elections and make laws that guide the conduct of local governments. This provision, good governance advocates say, has led to conflicting laws and overt political influence of state governments over the election and operation of local governments. Hence, every LG election often sees the party of the governor win all council seats. Allegations of rigging, disenfranchisement of rival parties, and imposition of candidates often trail these elections, leaving winning LG chairmen or chairpersons at the mercy of governors who effectively control their purses.
Although the current administration of President Bola Tinubu has also made efforts to make local governments more independent of states by enlisting the help of the Supreme Court, the apex court’s July 2024 judgment affirming financial autonomy for local councils has met institutional roadblocks on the way to implementation. Checks by Sunday Tribune reveal that more than a year after the Supreme Court handed down the landmark ruling, state governors still retain control of local council allocations, a violation of the court ruling mandating the Federal Government to make direct payments to local government accounts. Community advocates say the continued violation of the Supreme Court ruling has stunted growth and development at the grassroots.
In an interview with Sunday Tribune, Dr Rauf Bakare of the Department of Political Science, University of Ilorin (UNILORIN), said the Federal Government has been unable to implement the Supreme Court ruling so far because it violated Section 162(6) of the Constitution which establishes the State Joint Local Government Account (SJLGA) that allows the disbursement of local government funds to states. Bakare likened this provision of the 1999 Constitution to using the right hand to legitimise the existence of local governments, while using the left hand to take any semblance of power from them.
“Local government under the 1999 Constitution has no responsibility. Responsibility is different from function. What you have in the Constitution are functions of local government, not responsibilities,” the political analyst said. He argued that the apex court verdict was not based on the Constitution but on public policy, making its implementation difficult.
Local councils stranded in flawed federal system
One of the most pronounced stumbling blocks to the entrenchment of local governance in the Nigerian Constitution is the argument that local government does not belong in a federal system, which Nigeria operates. Truly, federalism consists of two levels of government (federal and state), leaving local government as a subordinate rather than an autonomous level of government free to execute its own agendas of development with funds sent into its independent account.
In a 2017 interview with Sunday Tribune, Afenifere leader, Oba Dipo Olaitan, kicked against any move to amend Section 7 of the 1999 Constitution to guarantee local government autonomy. The monarch argued that a federal system cannot have three tiers of government. “To the best of my knowledge, in federating units, we have two tiers of government. The state can have areas, counties and centres for the sake of administrative purposes but that is also recognised by the state, not by the Federal Government,” he said.
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