Former Lagos Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola has dismissed the idea of full autonomy for local governments under Nigeria’s current constitutional framework, describing it as “unrealistic” and inconsistent with the country’s legal and structural foundations.
Speaking during an interview on Channels Television on Saturday, Fashola made it clear that, based on his in-depth interpretation of the 1999 Constitution, local governments were not designed to operate independently of state governments.
Fashola said: “As it stands today, it is unrealistic to expect autonomy for local governments created by the constitution. They were not meant to be autonomous. That is my view after a very, very close reading of certain provisions of the constitution.
“Some of those provisions provide, for example, that local government in its economic activities and all of that will have laws made for it by the state house of assembly.
“If you look at the legal and ordinary meaning of the word autonomy, it suggests that you are acting independently without any outside influence and authority. To that extent, a state house of assembly making laws for what and how a local government can function is in itself an external influence that contradicts the idea of autonomy.
“All of those responsibilities are dependent on one item, land. And to the extent that the state government controls land, which affects how the local governments will carry out these functions, I didn’t think that autonomy was intended.
“What I think was intended was some sort of collaboration, some sort of supervision, some sort of oversight of the state over the local government. And that is inherent in what you will find in section 162, which deals with the state’s joint local government account.
“Because up till 1999, the local governments used to collect their monies directly from the federation account under a process that I think was known as JAC, Joint Accounts and Education something.
“But in the advent of the democratic era, it was found out that there were so many of them, or not a few of them, who had defaulted in the very basic obligation of paying staff salaries, primary health care workers, primary school teachers, salaries and pensions. And there was a backlog of debts.”
