The Nation Newspaper Why governors should align with President Tinubu on LG autonomy, by Tunde Rahman
Governors have been acting tongue-in-cheek in their reactions to last Thursday’s verdict of the Supreme Court, which stripped them of their suffocating grip over the money meant for local governments in the country. , who spoke on behalf of the governors, said the forum welcomed the apex court’s ruling granting financial autonomy to the councils, describing the verdict as a relief from the burden on the governors.
Speaking with members of the Nigerian Union of Journalists in Ibadan, Oyo State, the governor said: “They said there is a judgment of the Supreme Court on local government autonomy. I think it is just a distraction. We must face the real issue that we have. The issue that we have is that we are not producing enough. We are not productive. Maybe it may be part of the problem, we want to have value for what is being shared but our problem is productivity.
The National Assembly had in March 2022, voted on 68 bills aimed at further amending the 1999 Constitution. At the end of the exercise, 44 of the bills were approved by both the Senate and the House of Representatives and transmitted to the state assemblies for concurrence. Nine bills could not scale through. Prominent among the bills voted against by the state parliaments was the one seeking to grant financial and administrative autonomy to the country’s local governments.
This is with a view to reinforcing democratic principles through full financial powers and effective devolution of power to the councils and ensuring genuine representation at the grassroots through periodic elections. According to the apex court, it is unconstitutional for state governors to retain and utilise LG statutory allocations paid through them.
This landmark judgment is a critical step forward. It has now become imperative for the governors to file behind President Tinubu in ensuring that local councils become an independent and self-governing tier of government. In its ruling, the Supreme Court okayed the process leading to the creation of the councils and described the creation of the 37 new councils as legal, but declared them as inchoate because they had not been listed in the constitution as LGAs.Asíwájú Tinubu’s ingenuity came to play with the new councils becoming Local Council Development Areas. Today, these LCDAs have helped to expand the frontiers of development in Lagos.
The Supreme Court granted the states power to grant building approvals and other development plans in the states where such federally-acquired lands are domiciled while not denying the federal government the right to also acquire lands in the states. This, thus far, has resulted in the process of devolution of regulatory powers to three states – Enugu, Ekiti, and Ondo – to set up their electricity markets.
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