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Local Governments: The Missing
Tier of Government By Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai
Newsdiaryonline Fri Jan 6,2011
El Rufai
In the year 2011, the 774 Local Governments and the 6 Area
Councils (LGAs) in Nigeria received almost N1trillion (about
$7billion) from the Federation Account, which is equivalent to
the entire annual budgets of Burkina Faso, Rwanda, Burundi and
Togo combined. These transfers were to enable them carry out
their functions, which include the administration of primary
education and primary health care, construction of markets and
boreholes, and rural development in general. Most Nigerians
would agree that is little or nothing to show for this huge
transfer of free cash to the LGAs. It has not always been this
bad.
Between 1955-1965, LGAs (or Native Authorities as they were then
called) were responsible for about 12 per cent of the public
expenditure in the country, equivalent to almost 10 per cent of
the GDP. But today, they gulp about 21 per cent of our national
revenue without commensurate results for the subventions that
they collect from the federation. And worst still, with few
exceptions, they now entirely depend on transfers from the
centre for their own expenditures. They no longer generate
revenues like in the first republic and believe they are created
simply to collect monthly allocations to spend on politicians,
thugs and families. It would be an understatement to say that
the LGAs performance of their core functions has been
disappointing, nearly criminal.
The primary responsibility of local governments as enshrined in
the constitution is rural,
urban and community development as outlined earlier. However,
rather than working to reduce poverty by providing these
services to their people, they end up just paying salaries of
primary school teachers, and not much more. While our LGAs
contribute a negligible percent of our GDP and employ less than
2 per cent of the employed population, in the United States,
counties, which are the equivalent of our local governments
contribute about 20 percent of the GDP and employ about 10
percent of the employed population.
Everything from elementary schools to international
airports are developed and under the control of counties,
municipalities and city councils in the US!
In South Africa and Indonesia, local governments have the
responsibility to provide an expansive range of services like
those in Nigeria, but they are largely fiscally and political
autonomous, as only about 14 percent of their revenue comes from
central government transfers, compared to the almost 90 percent
in Nigeria. Local governments and council elections are
independently conducted without interference from the provinces.
Unlike, Nigeria, countries, taxes constitute by far the largest
source of revenues, comprising on average of 52 percent of total
revenues. Council elections are not decided by the
states/provinces, but by community arrangements that guarantee
free and fair emergence of credible leadership. The instances
above point to the direction of reform of our broken and
dysfunctional LG system.
In preparing this piece, I conducted an informal straw poll of
the perception of the respective LGAs performance on a scale of
one to hundred among my circle of friends, relations and work
colleagues. It is admittedly unscientific and the sample small,
but quite insightful. First, local governments were scored about
10 per cent in the performance of their five core constitutional
functions and the sample believed that they show no sign of
improvement. Secondly, the overall performance of LGAs has
slipped considerably from about 40 per cent in 2005 when the
average LG got N60 million monthly from the centre, to less than
10 percent in 2011, when they got an average of N100 million
monthly from the Federation Account!. What I learnt from the
sample is that most LGAs only
pay primary school teachers' salaries and nothing more out of
their core functions. No respondent gave any LGAs more than 40
percent in any service delivery area - a failing grade in any
exam anywhere in the world. It is therefore no surprise that our
rural areas are so underdeveloped.
It was General Murtala Muhammad regime that inaugurated and
subsequently accepted the recommendations of the Dasuki Local
Government Reforms Committee in 1975. The administration
promulgated the enabling law effective
on October 1, in 1976 to entrench Local Governments as an
independent and self-accounting tier of government. The reform's
two most important priorities were to reduce development
inequality (between urban and rural areas) and to increase
political accountability across the country. We then had 360
LGAs in the 19 states of Nigeria.
To carry out these efforts, the 1979 constitution assigned to
the LGAs some substantial resources,
along with political and economic responsibilities. They
were required to provide most public services with the exception
of higher education and security. The essence was to create
strong political accountability, democracy and a sustainable
political culture.
What went wrong with the Local Government reforms? Why has the
responsiveness of LGAs to the needs of their citizens been
deteriorating as their revenue-dependency increasing? And how
did Commissioners of Local Government become the best friends of
State Governors, almost always, governors-in-waiting under this
democratic experiment?
The reforms failed because the federal government itself and the
states, in pursuit of political maneuverings and a share-the
cake mentality changed all that. First, we allowed the number of
LGAs to spiral to 450, then 78), while the number of states
nearly doubled from 19 to 36 plus FCT. Resources had to be more
thinly spread across a larger number of fiscally-weak, often
incompetent administrative units. Then, more recently, in what
looks like a reversal of our federalism and Constitution, the
PDP-led central government for the past 10 years has implemented
a policy, which rather than encourage LGAs to provide affordable
services for their localities by strengthening their political
and fiscal autonomies, has embraced the opposite: annexing them
to the state governments and treating them like fiefdoms instead
of independent third
tier of government.
The two culprits that enabled this "annexation" of LGAs in the
1999 constitution are the creation of State-Local Joint Account
and the State "independent" electoral commissions! These have
undermined economic development and political accountability.
Obviously, neither the states that have swallowed the LGAs by
collecting their monthly subventions nor the local governments
themselves are offering any core service to Nigerians. These
sections of the constitution need to be revisited.
There also seem to be a lack of commitment from the federal
government to make local governments truly functional. A wide
range of complex constitutional and technical issues needs to be
addressed. There are confusions about the roles and
responsibilities entrusted to local governments, some of which
they lack the technical and administrative capacity to execute.
Limited legitimacy and legal obstacles hinder them from
exercising many of their functions.
Thus the impact of the whole process in terms of service
delivery, local economic development, poverty alleviation and
entrenchment of democracy is doubtful and probably not feasible
at all under the current constitutional framework.
Effective LGA administration can strengthen democracy in
Nigeria, improve the quality and cohesiveness of government,
entrench democratic values, improve the effectiveness and
efficiency of service delivery and create an enabling
environment for local economic development. The main advantage
of LGAs is that due to their relative proximity to people, scale
and scope limitations, they can be more efficient (or at least
as responsive) at providing certain public services compared to
states and federal government if properly organized and
resourced.
Local governments have a significant impact on population and
employment growth of their areas of jurisdictions. How the
grassroots are governed matters for local economic growth. They
could also stimulate income growth for the people if they
perform their core functions effectively, especially in the
current economic crises marked by high unemployment. We need to
economically empower more people in the rural areas, create an
environment for good jobs (formal and informal) and enable
decent wages, benefits, good living conditions and prosperity.
Local governments must create job programs that take advantage
of the competitive advantage and resource endowment of each
community. A city, town or village (by community efforts) can
create jobs in both the private and public sectors to put people
to work to grow the local economy.
The Town and Village Enterprises TVEs of China, floated
by local governments are good models of rural industrialization
and employment opportunities.
There is the need to constitutionally mandate LGAs to invest
more on projects that actually create a large number of good
jobs for their people while providing them with the crucial
services. LGAs dish
out billions of naira in incentives as part of their poverty
eradication and empowerment efforts, but with few or no
sustainable jobs to show for them. They need to prioritize
direct public spending by local governments on programmes that
stimulate economic activity and therefore create jobs. Some of
these initiatives include building and rehabilitation of
infrastructures, investments in access roads, and
renovating/upgrading of schools facilities, health centres,
motor parks and markets.
For LGAs to be effective, the overall governance system should
essentially have the following features: a balanced set of
political, administrative and fiscal powers.
They must be able to play their role in an overall
conducive structure of democratic governance and practices, e.g.
with fair and free elections that give council members
legitimacy. Intergovernmental linkages should be adequate,
including redefined federal and state governments roles that
will allow sustainable local development. Processes for
elaborating development policies at local government levels must
be well articulated. There should be strong upward, downward and
horizontal accountability within the governance system of the
local governments. This should not only ensure improved service
delivery and transparency, but also offer protection against
elite capture and corruption. There must be active citizenship
and empowered communities so that all groups and individuals can
be properly represented. People must have access to information
and be able to express their views to achieve a good balance
between federal, state and local governance processes. Better
quality people - at political, technocratic and administrative
levels need to be available to work in our LGAs, and more
experienced, "retired-but-contented" public servants run for LGA
positions.
Nigeria cannot develop if our LGAs are unwilling and unable to
redistribute resources in favour of the poor and ensure that the
poor have access to basic services. Federal agencies must be
able to ensure that national poverty reduction strategies are
reflected at grassroots by including and integrating them into
the core function of LGAs. Monitoring mechanisms must be in
place to monitor the process of governance at the grassroots, to
reflect on results and make necessary adjustments in the process
from time to time. In the meantime, our LGAs are best described
as missing in action. And Nigeria is the worse for it. We must
address this as a matter of utmost urgency.
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