By Clement T. Ofuani
MON, MARCH 5 2018-theG&BJournal-For some reasons the local government councilors flocked around me. One of them confessed to me that he relished being around me because he always took away something positive. That was flattering but I accepted the compliment nonetheless. This was March 2013. As usual, our discussion ranged across diverse issues that I cannot recall now, but at some point I asked the councilors who had been complaining bitterly about their lot whether in truth, the ordinary man in our local government area would lose anything at all or miss anything if the local government council was shut down for say three months. There was pin-drop silence as they seemed to absorb and reflect on the import of the question. In what was a profound admission of truth, one of them said to me that he didn’t think they would be missed and the rest concurred.
Well, in another profound bit of irony, the National Union of Local Government Employees went on industrial strike shortly after this episode and shut down the council for more than three months. Apart from staff and relations of council employees, hardly anybody in the local government area noticed that the Council was not doing business during the period. This speaks so much about the services that the councils are providing for the people at the grassroots who incidentally are supposedly the raison d’etre for their existence.
I am not in any way suggesting that the local government councils are not necessary for development especially at the community level where they are supposed to be better positioned to deliver solutions to the people at the point of need. However, the operations of local government councils have increasingly left much to be desired essentially because of bad politics but that should be subject for another day. In Nigeria today, we have 768Local Government Councils and 6 Area Councils in the Federal Capital Territory which together operate as the third tier of government. These local government areas were created by the military in their usual seemingly arbitrary manner but skewed to favour the top brass in power at that time. The states, which are the federating units had no input in the creation as the authorities at the state level during the military era were subordinate officers on military postings.
The attraction was of course the funding of the local government councils from the central purse called the federation account. While this could happen under arbitrary military rule, the question begging for answer now and which we must answer after 19 years of unbroken constitutional civilian rule is whether the funding formula used by the military is still relevant given the provisions of the 1999 Constitution. The answer to this question would perhaps help the nation to come to terms with the racket in the local government administration and the state of our federation.
Let me digress a little. It was perhaps in recognition of the inequity in the allocation of revenues from the federation account to the local government councils that Lagos State sought to address by creating additional local government councils so that at least, a semblance of justice could exist between the number of local government councils in highly populated Lagos State and its northern counterpart, Kano which has forty four local government areas constitutionally guaranteed and supported by the federation account. We are also witnesses to how ferociously; Lagos State was attacked for the temerity in exercising their constitutional powers. Consequently, the Lagos State creation of the additional local government areas was declared inchoate because the National Assembly would not consider them or amend the constitution to include them in order to complete the process.
It is important to recall at this juncture that the Supreme Court of Nigeria had in a ruling affirmed that matters concerning the governance of local government areas under the 1999 Constitution were firmly and totally under the jurisdiction of the States. We can now return to the attraction of the central funding of the Local Government Councils as the main reason why a State Government would not be allowed to exercise its constitutional powers over the local government areas including the determination of the number that is suitable to their circumstance and aspiration for efficient and effective service delivery at the grassroots. To understand this fixation, it is necessary to refer to the relevant provisions of the 1999 Constitution and the actual practice in breach by successive governments since 1999.
“Section 162(2) The President, upon the receipt of advice from the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission, shall table before the National Assembly proposals for revenue allocation from the Federation Account, and in determining the formula, the National Assembly shall take into account, the allocation principles especially those of population, equality of States, internal revenue generation, land mass, terrain as well as population density;
Provided that the principle of derivation shall be constantly reflected in any approved formula as being not less than thirteen per cent of the revenue accruing to the Federation Account directly from any natural resources.
(3) Any amount standing to the credit of the Federation Account shall be distributed among the Federal and State Governments and the Local Government Councils in each State on such terms and in such manner as may be prescribed by the National Assembly.
(4) Any amount standing to the credit of the States in the Federation Account shall be distributed among the States on such terms and in such manner as may be prescribed by the National Assembly.
(5) The amount standing to the credit of local government councils in the Federation Account shall also be allocated to the State for the benefit of their local government councils on such terms and in such manner as may be prescribed by the National Assembly.
(8) The amount standing to the credit of Local Government Councils of a State shall be distributed among the Local Government Councils of that State on such terms and in such manner as may be prescribed by the House of Assembly of the State.”
Section 162 (3) clearly establishes that the power to enact the formula for the distribution of the revenue in the Federation Account between the Federal, State and Local Government Councils in each state lies with the National Assembly and in so doing, the National Assembly must be guided by the principles established by S.162(2). S.(162(4) further empowers the National Assembly to enact the formula for distributing the share of the Federation Account revenue due to States among the States guided again by the principles established by S.162(2) while S.162(5) empowers the National Assembly to enact the formula for allocating the share of the local government councils to the States for the benefit of the Local Government Councils in the State in bulk but the power to legislate on the formula for distribution of the share of the Local Government Councils among the Local Government Councils in a State is firmly given to the House of Assembly of each State by S.162(8). If these clear provisions of the Constitution are adhered to, it will not be possible for the Federation Account Allocation Committee to determine the allocation to each Local Government Council in a State which the Federal Ministry of Finance likes to publish in the newspapers every month in the mistaken belief that they are promoting transparency.
In practice, the Federal Government has continued the practice of the preceding military administrations of allocating the share of the Local Government Councils in a State among the Local Government Councils by applying to the Local Government Councils, the formula for distributing the share of the States among the States in total breach of the provisions of the 1999 Constitution. The question is why successive administrations have since 1999 continued this breach of the Constitution. Is it an error or is it deliberate and who are those benefitting from the continued breach and at the expense of whom?
The answer to the question can be found in the inequity underlying the lopsidedness in the creation of Local Government Councils by the Military that gave undue advantage to some sections of the country at the expense of others.
Population census has always been a very contentious issue in Nigeria from pre-independence times to the present day but that is a topic for another day. Nonetheless, the 2006 questionable census discredited by the former chairman of the National Population Commission Eze Festus Odimegwu shows that Kano State has the highest population of 9,401,288 and is closely followed by Lagos with 9,113,605. While Kano state has 44 local government areas, Lagos State has only 20. Rivers State with a population of 5,198,718 has 23 local government areas while Jigawa State with a population of 4,361,002 has 27 local government areas. In effect, Rivers and Lagos States with a combined population of 14,312.321 have a total of 43 local government areas; less than Kano State alone with 44 local government areas and more interestingly,almost half of Kano and Jigawa States with a combined population of 13,762,290 but with 71 combined local government areas.
Delta, Edo, Bayelsa and Rivers States which between them account for roughly 60% of the total revenue in the Federation Account have a total of 75 local government areas which is almost equal to the total for Knano and Jigawa States which make up the old Kano State . Why are these facts important? One of the key principles in the revenue allocation formula is equality of states which attracts 40% of the revenue due to the States. Distributed equally, each state gets 2.77% each under this principle. Under the military administrations, the allocations to Local Government Councils were distributed by interpreting the principle of equality of state as equivalent to equality of Local Government Councils. Thus, Kano State gets 5.68% of the revenue for Local Government Councils under this misinterpretation which is twice what it is entitled to, while Lagos gets 2.58% and Edo, Delta, Rivers and Bayelsa States get a total of 9.68% instead of 11.08%. When these percentage differences are applied year after year,to the Federation Account revenue of over 400 billion Naira monthly,the monetary value is staggering. That differential benefit is what is being protected by the benefitting states over the past 19 years of the operation of the 1999 Constitution.
The fact that this deceit has continued under different administrations and different political parties is clear evidence that the controllers of Nigeria are never affected by the mere change of the head of the executive arm of the Federal Government. The more troubling part is the seeming acquiescence of the States at the receiving end of this practice and who could at least seek the adjudication of the Supreme Court on the matter. This is perhaps the only way this racket can end and each State would then determine the right number of Local Government Councils it requires to deliver effective services to the people they serve.
