The House of Reps voted ‘yes’ on the issue of local government autonomy while the Senate voted ‘no’; where do you stand?
The autonomy for the local government system as opined by Governor Babatunde Fashola is that we oppose it; it will take us several steps backwards. We have taken some steps forward and they are now requesting us to go back with autonomy. As a nation, we have practised autonomy in the past during the regime of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (RD). Then the local government chairmen were more or less competing with the state governors because they had direct relationship with the president, and if you look at this, the implication is that they are likely to work at cross purposes.
In the 1999 Constitution, if you look at the functions of the governors and those of the president, the functions and powers are almost the same – the difference is that one is ruling over a state and the other is ruling over the entire country. If you look at it, the 1999 Constitution recognises the centre and the sub-national; the local governments are creations of the state Houses of Assembly, in accordance with the 1999 Constitution, which gives power to the Houses of Assembly to regulate the activities of the local governments. What they are trying to do is to amend it so that the local governments will have direct access to their funding or to their allocations. We should be mindful of the political implication of this.
I strongly believe that the motive is not for the local governments to progress or develop at a fast pace, but to cede the control of the local governments to the centre; we are saying that we want to decentralise and devolve power; power should reside with the people and emanate from the people. It is very easy for a local government chairman to access the state and seek intervention, but when the allocation comes directly from the central and the councils are no longer in the control of the states, it takes away a lot of things and it can lead to maladministration, and abuse of office. I remember during the IBB days when they were given autonomy, most of those who are canvassing for autonomy now were not even sure of their jobs because the local government chairman could come to the office in the morning, if the chairman makes a request for anything and the Council Treasurer (CT) or Council Manager (CM) could not meet up, the CT or CM gets fired and nothing happens.
That was why the Local Government Civil Service Commissions were created. If you look at all the enabling laws, they have LG Civil Service Commission; they have several commissions, agencies of the government created by the state. If at the end of the day, you now take away the responsibility of controlling their resources or giving them money from the Joint Allocation Account (JAC), are you going to invalidate the agencies of government that have been put in place to check the activities of these local governments. We have tried it in the past and it failed us – the LG chairmen were living like kings. Then, this will take us back to 20 local governments in Lagos State, a lot of people would lose their jobs because if you don’t get allocation from the federation account, what is in the 1999 Constitution is 774 local governments, the additional local councils created by Lagos State, which the constitution empowers us to do, will no longer function. You can see the conflict of constitutional provisions here. I would say that local government autonomy should not take the front burner.
In Rivers State, what do you think would have happened if the local government autonomy had existed before now? A situation where five people impeached the speaker in a House of Assembly of 32 people and purportedly nominated one of them to be the speaker, remaining four, who are in support of a faction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), is not palatable. If the governors and other 27 lawmakers had not responded the way they did, they probably would have impeached Governor Rotimi Amaechi and his deputy and the same guy, who was appointed or selected amongst the five lawmakers would become the governor of the state because the calculation is so simple; he was doing the bidding of the presidency and when that happens, where are we heading to as a nation? You can imagine what would have happened if the autonomy is being enjoyed in Rivers State, if the local government chairmen elected in the state get their allocation directly from the federation account, their loyalty would be to the federal government and not to their state governor and that would bring chaos in the state.
Now, aside this, the federal government is proposing that the State Independent Electoral Commission (SIEC) should stop conducting local government elections; what are they trying to say? The PDP governments are trying to entrench themselves all over the country. I am looking at it from that perspective as a student of politics because he who pays the piper calls the tune and injury to one is injury to all. If we all keep quiet and allow this misdemeanor and unwarranted policy see the light of the day, it would be dangerous. A lot of people are myopic; people don’t really understand what is behind this autonomy. Look at it from different angles for you to take a position. If you look at the political angle, it is a ploy by the PDP to institutionalise themselves right from the grassroots by ensuring that it is their people that are everywhere. When the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) comes to conduct elections at the local governments, they would ensure that areas where they (PDP) don’t have control will not get ballot papers, and at the end of the day, they would declare results. So, I can conveniently tell you that people who understand the workings of local governments, who have the interest of Lagos in particular and the south west states at heart, would never support the autonomy of local governments.
You said we have taken some steps forward and some steps backward as people would be jobless in a state like Lagos if LGs are granted autonomy; can’t the same constitution that supports LGs come up with clauses to guard against abuse of power and corruption in the system?
How do you stop an officer from mismanaging funds; executive recklessness is very difficult to curb, especially at that grassroots level. Some state Houses of Assembly don’t query anything that comes from their governors, very few or not all. In the local governments, it is considered as an affront when councillors raise issues about anything that has to do with their chairman, so where are you going to get the checks and balances from. And the media and non-governmental organisations are indifferent because they feel that even when they shout, nothing happens.
The best way is to allow the status quo to remain and see how we can ensure that they have access to their funds and that they are not controlled excessively. If the Lagos State Government wants to borrow money outside the country, the international bodies can only give them money if it is incorporated in the borrowing plan of the federal government. If it is not there, the fund would not be given to us. Similarly, at the local government level, for them to borrow fund, they need an approval from the state and this approval ought to be given by the Houses of Assembly. Based on the laws made in the state during the era of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, they have ceded that power to the governor of the state and that is why when there is need for any local government to borrow fund, they take recourse to the governor through the Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs. Basically, I don’t see any difference in what we are practising now and what the federal government is doing to the states.
What would you say to those in the House of Reps who went through several processes and looked at the advantages and disadvantages of the system before they approved LG autonomy?
Do you know that the same autonomy being proposed was turned down by the Senate? It could not scale through there. And do you know that this same autonomy was not voted for by all the members of the House of Reps? I am very sure that those who voted against it are representatives of the states where you have a semblance of local governments. In the northern part of Nigeria, you might see a signboard of a local government secretariat, and if you go there, sometimes, it would be under lock and key, sometimes they open it, but you can never find people there. The structures and peculiarities of the local governments differ from one area to another, so we will not say because this policy will not affect a certain region of the country, we will now force it over every other part of the country. I am of the opinion that we should not think of granting autonomy to local governments, but we should in a way allow them to exercise more freedom in terms of how they expend their resources.
Most of the reasons for the agitations is that the states make some deductions and between us, I would say that it is the constitutional responsibilities of local governments to clear drain channels, to ensure that there is no dirt within the local government area. The states made a law; the functions of the local governments are in Section 4 of the 1999 Constitution; they can only enforce the laws in pursuance to the laws made by the state Houses of Assembly and that is why the House, having looked at the options, decided to do it well. When they were collecting money directly, most local governments didn’t pay their staff salaries regularly, teachers’ salaries were being owed, you see waste products all over the place. Ever since the state houses of assembly have been pragmatic enough to enact a law that takes away the responsibilities from them and deduct the cost, the basic deductions people talk about have to do with the teachers’ salaries and staff salaries, which is their responsibility to pay. In the past, this money would get to them and they would now have to pay the staff, but they owed several months of arrears and caused a lot of discomfort, which is why the state has taken it upon itself as a duty to remove statutory deductions and make the payments directly. As the Chairman of the House Committee on Public Accounts (Local), I have equally directed, in the last exercise, that all payments made by the state on behalf of the local governments should reflect in their books as the monies were paid on their behalf so that no local government would come up to say they took their money.
You said if autonomy is granted, it is likely the 37 LCDAs in Lagos will be sacked, yet the constitution allows the states to create local councils; how can you explain this?
The constitution allows the states to create local councils, which we have done following the due process, but they need to be listed and the listing can only be done through an amendment of the constitution. It would only become less cumbersome if they take away the listing of local
governments from the constitution to get local governments created – it should just be in the gazette. That is another area where the National Assembly has not addressed. I am strongly of the view that because the constitution has empowered us to create local governments, we have done our best to do that. The same constitution says that for it to be recognised, it needs to be listed and for it to be listed, the constitution must be amended and to do that is a long process. Don’t forget that you need the National Assembly and two-thirds of the state Houses of Assembly to amend anything in the
constitution. In Lagos State, we have 20 local governments and we created additional 37, making it 57. While we were doing that, some other states saw Lagos and they all decided to create additional local governments; they felt that the moment Lagos State’s new local governments scale through, then additional revenue would accrue to the state, and because of that even those who cannot fund councils followed suit. The process of approval is like a camel passing through the needle’s eye.
Is that why it would affect the 37 LCDAs in Lagos?
Yes, because the 37 LCDAs created in the state are yet to be in the constitution, so they are not collecting money from the federal government. The money that would come would only be to the 20 local governments and they will not give the LCDAs money because every local council would be treated like an entity. Then, we will have to revert to those LCDAs, which were more or less like administrative units, and with this, they would not have chairmen or councillors. Many of our people are ignorant of this and they are agitating that they are being cheated by the state. The agitation should not be that the states are not giving them money; the federal government takes 52% of the country’s total earnings, the remaining 48% is shared among the 36 states and 774 local governments in the country.
Every year, you see the budget of the federal government in several trillions, what is the impact of that money on Lagos – I am not talking of any other state because this is where I live. If Lagos can look inwards to develop the state to where it is seen as the pride of the country, I don’t think the federal government should stop if from using the councils to transform the state to a state of our dream. Drops of water make an ocean, little developmental efforts have helped the state. We should look at the issue objectively; if the federal government is just saying that we will release your money to you directly and every other thing remains, I probably would not have seen it as a political implication. But they are saying that ‘we will release money to you, we will conduct election into local governments and all that, as a politician, I have to look at the politics behind those statements to know where they are heading and all Nigerians should criticise it.
Don’t you think that the agitation for state creation would increase local governments in Nigeria since the new states would have their local governments?
If a state is created out of Lagos or any other state, as long as it is a state that can generate substantial percentage of its revenue, I would support it. You know what happens at the federation, when the total revenue from oil, which forms 80% of our resources and the rest 20% comes from VAT and others, the moment the earnings come in, oil producing states get 13% derivation which they deduct from source before sharing the money, so some states have an advantage, the oil producing states get derivation and they are so rich. The population of Bayelsa State, for instance, is just about one million – that is not even up to that of old Alimosho Local Government in Lagos State; is that equitable distribution of resources?
What I think the National Assembly should do on constitutional amendment is to look at the competing needs of an average Nigerian. What we need to turn around our economy is for us to be able to generate electricity. May be some people who import generators have been bribing them. It is not illegal for any state to generate electricity, but when you generate electricity, you cannot transmit – the transmission is on the exclusive list. They should consider removing it to concurrent list. Let states develop at their own pace. Our leader, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu built a power station at Ikorodu in his own time as governor of Lagos State. They allowed him to set up the plant, but he cannot transmit except at a micro level. Power should be decentralised the same way they did to telecommunication.
With as little as N5,000, you can own a phone with the line and make a call. That should take a front row in the constitutional amendment; a state that is not producing, a state that is not manufacturing, where about 70% of the workforce are redundant is a country heading for collapse and we should seriously put aside political interest or sentiment and ensure that states, even local governments, are allowed to generate and distribute electricity - in fact private companies should be allowed to generate and distribute once they meet the standard set by the electricity council or board. And more importantly, if it is the money they are looking at, the states should pay royalty to the federal government from the income they generate from electricity. I believe that our being poor is not because of our resources, but because of our decision to remain poor as a country. I don’t see any reason why electricity transmission cannot be on concurrent list.
Are you in support of child marriage?
I would say that incest should be condemned in its entirety; it results in genetic mutations; it should be condemned absolutely, vehemently and totally. Away from that, the National Assembly, the Senate in particular that is discussing it, it is not the issue of child marriage per se that they were discussing; they were discussing section 29 (4b) of the constitution that says that a woman has come of full age when she is married, whereas section 29 (4a) says full age begins from 18 years and above. It is not as if the Senate was debating child marriage – they were debating the removal of section 4b, which negates 4a and that it should go. I support that it should go because it gives room for child marriage once the parents have given their consent and the bride price has been paid. For us to put an end to child marriage,this section has to go and anybody who engages in child marriage can be arrested and prosecuted.
The Senate voted against the removal; we are yet to know what the House of Reps would say. After that, the state Houses of Assembly would now talk and I believe that Lagos State would want it to be removed because we want our girl child to be educated and be in a proper frame of mind before they are married. That is why, in the north, you see underage mothers having VVF, the urethra is joined together and they use urine bag as they cannot urinate on their own, I strongly oppose it, it is not palatable.
Post a Comment