By Obi Nwakanma
The place of the third-tier government, that is local government administration in Nigeria, has remained the thorniest and contentious issue in Nigerian federalism. It has to be, principally because it actually has led to general distortions in public service delivery at the most crucial levels of government.

The local or municipal government is the most important tier of government principally because it is the so-called basis for grassroots governance, and by statutory fact, provides the most domestic of the homeland services in a nation.

It generally ought to be the basis for city or county or municipal administration: who collects your tax; who provides and regulates electricity service and energy use; who cleans up the street after a storm or after its daily use; who builds and maintains county and municipal roads – those service arteries into the heart of the land and by which we traverse our cities and hinterlands on our daily chores; who runs the local police and emergency services; the parks; the City hospitals and town schools; and so on so forth.

The local government is by its very nature that vital arm of public governance, and the true measure of our autonomy from an overwhelming behemoth state. Distortions in Nigeria’s local government administration and in the acts establishing them under the Federal constitution are the result of the long years of military rule.

The command and control structure of military governments made it necessary to create a uniform and standardized local government administration. Such standardization worked for a military system intent on establishing a powerful central panopticon of the public that it necessarily had to dismantle the key logic of municipal governance under a federation: the rule of its variability. That is to say, that the uniform legislation that standardized local government administration, taking its cue and life from the reports of the Dasuki Panel commissioned by the military regime under General Obasanjo forms the basis of conflict today in Nigerian federalism.

The work of General Alao Shakey-Shakey was continued by the one they call General Maradona, who gave even more teeth to that illegality by incorporating, within the law, the right of the federal government to directly create and fund local governments. These distortions failed completely to take account of the archive of debates and dialogues that were at the foundation of the various regional local government acts in 1954, when the issue of local government administration first reared up, towards decolonization.

The Northern and Western Regions chose to adopt the Native Administration system of local government while the Eastern Regional government under Azikiwe, after long and thoughtful deliberations in the Eastern Regional House of Assembly, chose to adopt the County council model of local government administration, because in their words, and following the various studies by government anthropologists, it was best suited to the democratic and republican traditions of the people of the East. Thus therefore was the foundation of the Eastern Region’s local government act of 1954 which established country administrations and Town Councils and village committees.

The current debate and the votes taken by the national Assembly therefore, over the so-called autonomy of the local governments misses the point and does overstep the boundaries of the task of constitutional amendment. There is absolutely no question that the constitution of the federation of Nigeria establishes the local government as the third-tier of government.

There are only two contending issues from that constitution: one is the question of the basis on which new local governments can be created; the second and most vital is the question of fiscal autonomy: should federal grants paid to local governments from the federation account be under the oversight of the state governments through the use of the common purse principle? Reasonable people think this erases the capacity of the local governments to act and to govern and should be rethought. The hands of local administrators have been tied behind their back, and the law makes them mere constitutional furniture on which the state governors with vast executive powers can sit on with impunity.

It is important for the National Assembly to divest itself of the power to create and regulate local governments. This power must be a state power following various conventions. Counties and ungoverned areas wishing to establish municipal governments may petition for incorporation, and based on their ability to fund their own services principally through a tax base may become incorporated municipalities under state laws. Direct federal grants to local governments must be made directly to such local governments based on their verifiable status.

One of the great contentions today is what many call the injustice of local government distribution and the funding distortions that make a state like Kano with forty-two local governments get federal grants almost in excess of what the entire South-Eastern Nigeria gets from the local government funds, and far more than Lagos with a bursting population. These distortions have to be corrected by legislation.

Although we have pegged funding of local government administrations principally based on land mass and population, there must be a case made for consistent review of such criteria to include direct services provided. For instance how many kids are registered in schools in Kano compared to Owerri; how many attend hospitals; what data do we have about the number of educated people seeking employment, housing, the use of public utilities, etc. in Jigawa against the same in Ebonyi? These clearly verified needs must be the basis for grants made to the local governments because in the end our human service index must be the true basis for making fiscal planning and for distributing resources.

Not land mass. And just as a final note to this local government question, and I’ve barely scratched its surface: Governor Anayo Okorocha fumbles on the question of the real governance of Imo state. Among his great experimental failures is his purported introduction of the “fourth tier” of local administration in Imo state. This is a classic con game.

The Towns have always been the basis of town government and community development in the East. Okorocha’s policy on local administration has only merely created new local monarchies and potentates at the vital grassroots where the South East has always enjoyed a modicum of democracy from electing their local leaders who direct community development. Let me therefore point that the Imo state house of Assembly which is generally known as a sleeping chamber, has the duty and obligation nonetheless, to make laws for the people and establish oversight over the executive branch must not be complicit in the ploy to turn town governments to pseudo-monarchies because it will lead to violent protests.

The real governments of the towns remain, and must remain, the elected Town Union executives, not the foolish “fourth government” of Ezes, warrant chiefs, proctors and proconsuls appointed by the Nero of Douglas House. More on this someday. But to put it simply: Governor Okorocha’s policy  is  distorting the balance  of local and community government in Imo state with this mad project called the “fourth tier.” It is pointless artifice and an empty ritual that will lead to no good. But it speaks in general to the current confusion in the third-tier administration in Nigerian federalism.