Governors’ loyalty to the current constitution might be at stake if they failed to raise their voice against any regulations the governors believe challenge their constitutional rights.
As this column mentioned last week, the attempt by NFIU to prevent states from creating any obstacles to local governments to have access to the funds transferred to the local governments as and when needed by the LGs may be seen, as many lawyers and governors have done, as a threat to the 1999 Constitution. The column last week also drew attention to histrionics of democratic discourse that taking NFIU to the judiciary for judicial interpretation of the constitution may enact, and that at the end of the day it is the politics of the country’s constitution, now under-countenanced by the warring groups, that may dominate the country’s political discourse after judicial or administrative resolution of the conflict between NFIU and NGF. The focus of the piece today is on the concerns that have not been shared by anti-corruption police agents in NFIU and believers in the states as the safest bankers for transfers to Local Governments deposited in joint accounts with the states.
Issues that seem to have been eclipsed by the wrangling between NFIU and defender of state sovereignty or superiority over the local government tier include first and foremost the character of the 1999 Constitution. In the spirit of rule of law, individuals and groups have unfettered right to defend the letters and spirit of a constitution in force, just as the NGF had already done. Governors’ loyalty to the current constitution might be at stake if they failed to raise their voice against any regulations the governors believe challenge their constitutional rights. But the point of today’s piece is to argue that regardless of how this challenge is resolved, issues about the rightness of a third tier of government military rulers saddled the country with in 1999 are rather than disappear are likely to become more strident as the country embarks on discussion of 2023 elections. The political discussion of constitutional provisions donated to Nigerians by the authors of the 1999 Constitution will remain alive, at least for those who are ready to think further about the three tiers of government bequeathed on the eve of departure of military rulers to the country in 1999.
Those who want to substitute their voice for the voice of the people in determining the country’s Basic Laws may accept the view that the current constitution, if allowed a chance to live for a long time, is bound to become acceptable to those who think that rejection of the constitution should have occurred since it was handed over to General Olusegun Obasanjo after the 1999 elections. Those who believe that the country’s democracy has been short-changed by the nature of the constitution that has given birth to elected governments and the many constitutional provisions that citizens might have thrown out had they been given the right to participate in negotiating the terms of the constitution are likely to remain critical of the constitution that they view as circumscribing or constraining political aspirations of citizens.
From the way political officers have related to sections of the constitution vis-a-vis joint state and local government accounts into which transfers to LGs are deposited for safe keeping, there is no doubt that many state governors regardless of their ideological stance—reactionary or progressive—have concerns about what the relationship between states and local governments should be. Correspondingly, citizens at the LG level and politicians and civil servants in the service of local governments have their own worries or concerns about the system of three tiers of government. But from anecdotal evidence, it seems that many non-state actors in many regions, especially in the Yoruba region have more worries about the logic of sharing revenue to the federation into three tiers of government—national government, 36 states plus FCT and 774 local governments. It is such people that the constitution is silent about and that the courts and even NFIU may not have reasons to worry about as they argue and search for solutions to who should have sole authority over LG funds warehoused for LGS in a joint account belonging to states and LGs.
Dictators in charge of governance in the decades of military rule created thy myth of even development of the country. This myth called for policies of giving each section of the multiethnic federation a piece of the national pie or cake. All the apostles of even development—from Obasanjo to Buhari—through the ethic of sharing revenue on the basis of number of states and local governments that were not constitutionally negotiated by the people are likely to see the 1999 Constitution as reflective of the will of the majority. It is, therefore, not surprising that such individuals or groups may not have any problems with the constitution that NGF is defending against the actions of NFIU.
But many including this columnist, who do not believe in sharing national wealth to a number of states fixed by agreed principle of creating states and a number of local governments that can be determined only by sub-national levels, are unable to gloss over the flaws and deficits in the 1999 Constitution that deserve immediate remediation. For obvious reasons, funding of governments in Nigeria—federal, state, and local—does not belong to the list of global best practices. For example, the countries that Nigerian leaders run to for investment, aid, and assistance on many areas of life are the United States, followed by Europe, and now China.
Apart from the fact that practice of federal system by two of the three major sources of investment and assistance to Nigeria do not have three tiers of government that depend on allocation of funds from the federation account. For example, in places like Germany, United States, Canada, and other federations, if a province or state has local governments, such units are not codified in the constitution of such countries, unlike in Nigeria where local governments are treated by the constitution as federating units and now as autonomous units to the states by NFIU.
There is no doubt that there are governors and even local government political officers that will prefer the current system that relishes sharing federation’s revenue across 36 or 37 states and 774 local governments. Nevertheless, there are millions of citizens, especially in Yoruba states with a long history of joint revenue generation governance and integrated development. Such people are also of the opinion that a time that economic diversification is the driver of the nation’s economy is the best time to do away with three tiers of government designed to live on a model of governance powered principally by revenue allocation system authored by military dictators.
A time that seems conducive to dispensing with constitutional provisions that authorise allocation of funds to 774 local governments and sustain the sovereignty of states over their sub-parts is also a good time for governors and citizens to demand a constitutional reform that can make Nigeria be like other working federal democracies. Such struggle for reform may be a better alternative to wrangling over who guards the money to send to local governments. This aspiration may defeat the short-term advantages of monthly or quarterly allocations to local government, but in the long run may return Nigeria to the pre-military governance philosophy that has not brought much-touted even development to Nigeria.
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