THE Supreme Court’s recent finding that local governments should receive their allocations directly from the federation account and that state governments cannot dissolve democratically elected local councils, ranks as the most important intervention in our domestic governance in recent times. On paper, it holds out the promise of a stronger democracy. Consistent with the principle that the central authority in any state should have subsidiary functions only, performing only those duties that cannot be done at a more local level, it should (at the very minimum) restore accountability to our politics. The thing, though, is that at present, there is a democratic deficit precisely at the subnational tier of government in the country. This, incidentally, reaches beyond the fact that state governments and their electoral bodies have a chokehold on the processes by which local council functionaries are “elected.”
It is more a function of the fact that so effete have local councils become over the years, that they have become near invisible to voters. More money will surely worsen this situation. Past all these hurdles, the hope is that, at some point, if “we” can redeem governance at the local government level (through better primary healthcare, functional primary schools, and arterial roads that do not weigh on vehicles’ suspensions, etc.), then the much ballyhooed “grassroots democracy” might yet mean something useful to our people.
To its credit, up to this point, the Tinubu government’s reform agenda looks like matching the hatful of changes to the organisation of the Nigerian state that were the highlights of the Obasanjo administration’s second term. The only problem is the hit-and-miss nature of the current reform effort. Arguably, several of the changes to the way the economy is run enacted by the incumbent federal government were either compelling or were compelled — as boosters of the government never tire to remind anyone who cares to listen.
The naira’s float is the most prominent of the many examples. In the light of the ominous state of the nation’s net external reserves on its assumption of office, there were not many options available to the government for arriving at the external price of the national currency. Inflation having already lessened the naira’s domestic price, the restoration of the central bank at the heart of domestic monetary policymaking was a no-brainer.
Neither was the monetary authority’s subsequent decision to tighten monetary conditions until it had a decent fix on rising prices. The now-partial removal of the subsidy on the pump gate price for petrol was as much an outcome of pinched government finances, as it reflected the need to combat the alliance that was living large on the subsidy scheme.
At first glance, then, a common thread appears to run through the Federal Government’s policy portmanteau — the strengthening of choice, for consumers, and voters alike (which, in the end, are but two sides of the same coin). You would not tell this fact, however, from looking at the government’s conduct in office. The Tinubu administration has gone back on its words far too often on policy direction (wags say far more than any government in living memory) for the scattershot tag not to apply. And this lack of ideological cohesion will count for much in the implementation of its most recent reform.
Being the tier of government closest to the electorate, local government councils with teeth should attract new political actors — semi-independents, even. And this is the nub of the matter. The introduction of independents or new political actors at any tier of government holds out the promise of new (and hopefully better) ways of governance. Nonetheless, it will be naive to imagine that what is about to become the ancien régime will sit on its haunches and idly watch a transition that will result in its eventual extinction. Whichever way the new powers of our local councils play out, the battle for political living room at the lowest level of governance in the country will be long and bitterly contested. In the beginning, the new entrants into the political mix (hopefully better qualified to govern) will be ill-equipped to contest.
Further reforms to governance will, thus, be required to leverage the strengthened financial and administrative independence that our local councils now have. A starting place will be changes to the way elections are managed across the tiers of government — but more so at the level where the principle of subsidiarity matters the most. Still, the most important of the changes that will be required to support more competent local government administration in the country, will be massive improvements to the administration of criminal justice in the country. This requirement unfortunately plays to a major weakness of the Tinubu administration. Not the staccato, hit-and-miss aspect, bad enough as this is. Not the inability or unwillingness to follow through with additional reforms. But the worrying lack of a thread that links the administration’s policy platform and implementation.
