THERE he goes again, taking Nigeria down a fruitless path. He will win the battle but he will not win the war. Even a dunderhead knows this but who will tell the all-knowing emperor that he is approaching the market with a gown smeared with faeces. In my Igbo nation such self-styled kings are routinely referred to as ‘eze onye agwalam’. His subjects scorn him sometimes publicly. His advisers also despise such an eze especially behind his back and in their closets.
About two weeks ago, Nigeria’s President, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a product of a farcical election last year and a compromised result, was reported to have used his Minister of Justice and Attorney-General, Mr. Lateef Fagbemi, to sue the governors of Nigeria’s 36 states in the Supreme Court to enforce the constitutionally prescribed autonomy of the 774 local government councils in the country. To paraphrase St. Augustine of Hippo, if a law is wrong even if it is enshrined in the Constitution, it should be ignored. It should never be enforced, no matter the good that was purportedly being pursued. The provisions in the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria as amended which contain the names of the 774 council areas are wrong, unjust and unjustifiable.
The reasonable expectation is that any democrat, including pretenders such as the Tinubus in Nigeria, will busy themselves with plans of how to unmake the wrong in an enduring and sustainable manner. Any other move as in the suit now in the Supreme Court will amount to perpetuating illegality in the guise of pursuing public good. The ruling All Progressives Congress [APC] political party majors in propaganda and distraction. The party has been at it since its accession to power at the centre in 2015. And some Nigerians have proved to be willing victims of the party’s shenanigans. APC supporters cut the image of voluntary slaves and sufferers of the Stockholm Syndrome.
Until the advent of military usurpers in government in 1966, local councils and native authorities were what their names suggested- local. It was the military Head of State, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, in 1976 that began the so-called major reform of the local government system based on a proposition written in 1974. Through the instrumentality of that so-called reform, the councils became a subject for entrenchment in the 1979 Constitution. That Constitution formed the core of the 1999 Constitution which was used to birth this democratic dispensation. It will be a subject of debate to insist that the military regime of Obasanjo was largely responsible for the distortion of Nigeria’s federal system of government as regards the local governments becoming a component of the country’s federating units. He was a military ruler, and such regimes thrive on a command and control structure. But command and control could still have worked in that era without making local councils part and parcel of the federating units. The regime had military governors and administrators at the sub national levels.
However, for a country which leaders appear to perennially grope in the dark, it is usually easier to look for who or what to blame for their missteps. For every ruler the blame should be on the door- steps of our colonisers or the preceding administrations- military or civilian. Critical thinking and preparedness for heavy lifting are never part of the governing template for our political elite. And no administration in our country’s 63 years of independence has shown itself incapable of deep thought than Tinubu’s. His predecessor who is yet the unrivalled affliction of Nigeria, Maj.-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, could easily have been awarded that bragging right but for the fact that the Fulani cattle herder had no interest in governing at all. For Buhari the presidency was a trophy and becoming president was a personal triumph. And both were monumental achievements on their own for him.
When Tinubu in late May approached the Supreme Court he wanted an order stopping state governors from arresting the growth of democracy in the local government areas by their whimsical sacking of elected local administrations and their replacements with appointed individuals. Tinubu obviously believes that elections approximate democracy and civility. He is wrong. In addition, the Federal Government wants the Court to stop governors from stealing Councils’ share of the monthly federal financial allocations which were remitted through the contraption called state/local government joint account. The Abuja regime is of the opinion that development at the grassroots is hampered and hindered because the governors who superintend the joint accounts steal and/or misappropriate the Councils’ funds. In this regard Tinubu is right but he will win only pyrrhic victory in court.
The Federal Government is asking the court to make an order permitting the funds standing in the credits of the councils to be directly channeled to them from the Federation Account in line with the provisions of the Constitution as against the alleged unlawful joint accounts created by governors. The suit also prayed the court to stop the governors from further constituting caretaker committees to administer the affairs of councils in violation of the constitutionally recognised and guaranteed democratic system. The plaintiff also wants the governors, their agents and/or privies to be stopped from receiving, spending or tampering with funds released from the Federation Account for the benefit of local governments when no democratically elected local government system is put in place in the states. The plaintiff averred that its case is supported by the Constitution which recognised three tiers of government- federal, state and local.
On its face value the federal argument is unassailable, commendable and worthy of wholehearted embrace. However, it is obvious that the Tinubu regime is dealing with the symptoms and not the disease. What needs to be cured is the Constitution which was created by the military regime of the late Gen. Sani Abacha for an envisaged ‘democratic’ government headed and controlled by him, but which was bequeathed to civilians in 1999 by Gen. Abdusalami Abubakar. Tinubu has demonstrated in recent days that lawmaking can be quick and easy. He did so with the restoration of the independence national anthem- ‘Nigeria we hail thee…’. He has a deep ‘rapport’ with the National Assembly so much so that a new bill was initiated and signed into law within one week. It was so fast and seemless that the habitual wailers did not have the time to protest. Their protest now is after the fact. You can argue that making an ordinary law is way less cumbersome than altering the Constitution. You are right. But we have the Jagaban in power and in office. APC already has 20 state governors and by extension 20 houses of assembly. So, the President can get the party chairman who is in office at his pleasure to invoke party supremacy for their [APC houses of assembly] concurrency to alter the Constitution and delete local governments from the document. The President can then use the carrot and the stick approach to get four additional houses of assembly not controlled by the APC to make up the two-thirds requirement to amend the Constitution. With the self-acclaimed grand master of Nigerian politics this is as simple as ABC.
And a constitutional amendment will ensure a permanent cure to the ills afflicting the councils as correctly diagnosed by the Federal Government. With the 774 local government areas off the Constitution, every state will have the right to create as many councils as tickles its fancy. The prevailing imbalance in council areas among states of the federation and the bad blood it generates will be addressed once and for all. To illustrate the lopsidedness in the creation of council areas, Kano and Jigawa used to be one state. That old Kano State had about the same population as Lagos state. Subsequently, Jigawa was carved out of Kano state. Currently Jigawa has 27 local government areas and Kano has 44 councils. So, combined Kano and Jigawa states have 71 local government areas while Lagos state has 20 constitutionally recognised council areas. All the councils receive federal allocations. Where is the equity in this arrangement?
Furthermore, the extant arrangement creates the impression that the local governments are parts of the federating units. To be sure, the involvement of the military in governing Nigeria created enormous distortions in our federal system of government. But after 24 years of democracy, the expectation is that the civilian rulers will begin to consciously correct the absurdities. Scrapping the local governments as presently constituted is a low hanging fruit. Creating council areas and funding them should be the exclusive preserve of each state. And each can create as many as it desires. Sharing federally collected revenue should be between the states and the federal governments. The Tinubu approach of going to court will not produce the desired result. The governors are already too invested in local government funds that they will hardly give up. They will find the way to have their hands in the cookie jar.
But the greatest joke in this episode is the suggestion from some other quarters that the ‘Independent’ National Electoral Commission [INEC] should be vested with the power to conduct local government elections, going forward. This is a joke taken too far. It suggests that INEC has won plaudits for the national and state elections it has been conducting since 1999. If the truth be told, INEC is part of the country’s electoral problems and the legitimacy issues afflicting our democracy. The earlier we perished the idea the better for Nigeria, Nigerians and our brand of democracy.
