Governance at the third tier

Governance at the third tier

THE crises ravaging the local government system across the country since the beginning of the present political dispensation lead directly back to the 1999 Nigerian Constitution. The existence and operation of the local government are provided for, and guaranteed, under Section 7 of that basic document. The provision is strong, direct and unambiguous. But not only does it contain seeds of discord, it also strikes at the root of whatever autonomy and respectability the drafters of the Constitution might have intended to grant the local government through other provisions in the Constitution.

Here goes the opening paragraph of that Section: "The system of local government by democratically elected local government councils is under this Constitution guaranteed, and accordingly, the government of every state shall, subject to section 8 of this Constitution, ensure their existence under a law which provides for the establishment, structure, composition, finance and functions of such councils."

This sentence consists of two parts. But what the first part promises is rendered precarious by the second parts. To put the fate of a grassroots government system in a state in the hands of a 25-member assembly is not a convincing advertisement for democracy. Nor does it make sense to put the purse of a local government in the pocket of a state government that is not more altruistic. Section 8 of the Constitution to which reference is made deals with the creation of new local government areas and the adjustments of boundaries between existing ones. I shall come back to this.

My understanding of the structure of the Nigerian polity has been that it is a federation of three levels of government: federal, state and local. That, of course, does not mean a rejection of K.C. Wheare's classical statement of the federal principle, with its implied two-level structure. The federal principle, Wheare said, is the "method of dividing powers so that the general and the regional governments are each, within a sphere, co-ordinate and independent." I am acutely aware that implicit in the Constitutions of the best known federal states and embodied in their political practices, is a two-level governmental structure. Nigerian federalism may, afterall, not be an exception. In fact, that is what the first paragraph of section 7 of the Nigerian Constitution says.

However, going by the way we talk about our "three tiers of government", and have talked about it since the local government reforms of 1976, I would consider it normal that a Nigerian regards Nigerian federalism as a three-tier structure which has been distorted. Essentially, however, the Nigerian federalism is today a two-tier federalism. The so-called "third tier", the local government, is a little more than a department of the second tier. My question: Is a situation where a state governor or a state House of Assembly can, with a stroke of the pen, dissolve a local government council or dismiss its executive authority a desirable one? My answer is no. It is contrary to what Nigerians believe Nigeria's federalism should be, namely, a federal system which satisfies Wheare's definition, except that instead to two tiers, we have three. In such a system, adopting Wheare's postulate, the three tiers will be "autonomous and coordinate." The basis of my judgement is the national political debate conducted in 1986 by the Political Bureau of which I was an active member, and the current, dominant political sentiments in Nigeria.

Many contributors to the political debate underlined their perception of the importance of the local government by suggesting the abolition of states, that is, a two-tier arrangement consisting of the federal government and the local governments! Ironically, it is the local governments that are being abolished, except as centres of state robbery and unconscionable self-appropriations. The popular vision of the local government as an autonomous and responsible grassroots government is, however, attainable. The first thing that has to be done in this direction is to remove the power to make laws for the establishment and functioning of the local government from the state government and to place the matter at the level of constitutional provisions, just like the provisions dealing with the functioning of federal and state governments. If you argue that political office holders and public servants at the local level are inexperienced and unskilled, I would argue that, relative to the local government area, the local politicians and public servants are as inexperienced and unskilled as their counterparts at the federal and state levels. And if you protest that local politicians and public servants are thieves, I would laugh and argue that their counterparts at the federal and state levels are not better. This may sound anarchistic or nihilist, but it is not. We are dealing here with a political and public service culture that is not segmented, but truly national, from the base to the top. So, let the principle of the "learning process" be applied to the three tiers of government. The "anarchistic" problems that are envisaged can be taken care of by strengthening democratic institutions and the law enforcement agencies. The 1999 Constitution makes it clear that under no circumstances can a state government be removed by federal authorities, not even where a state of emergency is declared. Why should a different stroke be applied to the third tier?

The functions of the local government listed in Section 7 and the Fourth Schedule of the Constitution are separated into two parts: the functions that the local government performs alone and those that it performs in conjunction with the state government. This is similar, except in form, to the separation between the Exclusive Legislative List (reserved for the federal government) and Concurrent Legislative List (a joint domain of the federal and state governments). What is required here is the raising of the status of the functions of the local government to that of a Legislative List, demarcating those functions that are exclusive from those that are concurrent between the federal, state and local governments. The functions of the local government contained in the 1999 Constitution, when pulled together, are well articulated and adequate for our circumstances. What is required here is a thorough discussion, in a Constitutional Conference or Sovereign National Conference, of the mode of financing items in the Concurrent List, such as Education, or rather, the mode of deducting at source, the local government's contribution to the execution of items in the Concurrent List. Also well articulated is the process of creating new local government areas or adjusting local government boundaries as stipulated in Section 8 of the Constitution. What is required is the conscious recognition that the final act in this exercise belongs to the National Assembly and, of course, the President whose accent is constitutionally required for all Bills of the National Assembly to become law. It is however expected that once the process has passed through the community, local government and state levels, the National Assembly to become law. It is however expected that once the process has passed through the community, local government and state levels, the National Assembly and the President will merely act as approving agencies. The approval of these latter institutions are required because the creation of a new local government area is an amendment of the Constitution. And the Constitution cannot be amended without the nod of the National Assembly and the President. The current controversy over the location of the power to create new local government areas should really not have arisen.

What I have said above notwithstanding (and here I am adopting the language of the Constitution), I think the adoption of the presidential system at the local government level should be reviewed. I strongly feel that councillors should be fully involved in the running of the local government, performing both legislative and executive functions, as was the case before the present political dispensation. The local government is simply too small for the separation of powers and functions inherent in the presidential system. It is wasteful in money and time. It will also be a development of "grassroots democracy" if local governments constitute democratically elected neighbourhood or community committees at ward levels to execute community work. Only a small fractions of local government revenues will be required to "empower" such committees. The "dividends" in social development, socio-political consciousness and poverty reduction will be immense. For this, we may need to study the experiment of the Calabar Municipal Government between 1988 and 1989 under the chairmanship of Bassey Ekpo Bassey.

January 2002