LG AUTONOMY: HOPE DASHED BY POLITICS

• NULGE Kicks

EVEN as the National Assembly is still collating the votes and resolutions of the States Houses of Assembly on amended sections of the Constitution, it has emerged that with a vote of 23 against 13, state legislatures have thrown out the much desired and publicised constitutional amendment proposal seeking to separate the local councils account from the states’ and ensured that funds meant for local councils get to them directly instead of waiting for governors to collect on their behalf. 

   This hint, which many described as a tragedy to grass root democracy in Nigeria, was dropped last week by the leadership of the Nigerian Union of Local Government Employment (NULGE) in its reaction to the voting out of the LG Autonomy amendment proposal.

   Just last week in Abuja, leaders of the conference of Speakers of State Houses of Assembly led by their chairman and Speaker of the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly, Hon. Samuel Ikon, submitted the resolutions of the State Assemblies on all provisions of the constitution amended by the two arms of the National Assembly.

   Although Ikon refused to specifically say anything about the fate of the proposal to grant financial autonomy to the third tier level of government, details of how most of the States Houses of Assembly were pushed by their governors to vote against it have since emerged.

  The National Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) was reported during the week to have not only exposed the voting pattern of the State Assemblies on the LG Autonomy proposal, but equally issued threats against those states, where the proposal was defeated.

   NULGE, which made its position on the issue known last week in Abuja through its General Secretary, Joshua Irapakop, directed all its members, especially in the states that rejected local government autonomy to boycott 2015 general elections or vote out the party in power in those states.

   It also called on all Nigerians to rise against those it called killers of democracy at the local government level by staying at home during elections.

   According to NULGE, the states, which voted against local government autonomy from the Southwest, are Ondo, Ekiti and Osun; from the South-South— Rivers, Cross River, Bayelsa, Delta, Edo, Akwa Ibom, while from the Southeast are Enugu and Imo States.

   Others are Northeast— Borno, Yobe, Taraba, Bauchi and Gombe; Northwest—Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto and Zamfara states.

   The states that supported local government autonomy are Lagos, Oyo, Ogun, Ebonyi, Abia, Anambra, Adamawa, Plateau, Niger, Kogi, Benue, Nasarawa and Kwara States.

   Irapakop, who expressed surprise at the decision of the states that voted against local government autonomy, lamented that democracy has been totally killed at the local government level in the country. He blamed the states governors for the development. 

  “Local government is the voice of the people. Our members and the public should vote against those who voted against local government autonomy,” Irapakop said.

  “They took the matter to the public, asking for their opinion and the people said they wanted local government autonomy. What have they done now with their decision? It means the people are not relevant.

  “It is high time Nigerians moved against the people in power, who go against what the people want. The only way they can protest that is by staying at home during the 2015 elections. They should not vote.”

  He stated that NULGE would be staging a protest in all the states affected, because “their action is not democratic, especially in those states that voted against local government autonomy.”

  Irapakop challenged them to come out and tell Nigerians their reasons for voting against it, adding that “we will not hesitate to mobilise our members and picket those state Houses of Assembly that have voted against it.”

  Also speaking on the development, NULGE president, Ibrahim Khaleel, declared that the two chambers at the federal level were able to harmonise their positions and came up with a common position, which was the opinion of majority of Nigerians.

   He stated that this was done in the best interest of the Nigerian project.

  Khaleel described the governors as clog in the wheel of progress and development of Nigeria, saying, “All previous attempts to strengthen the institutional framework of local governments have been hijacked or killed by the conspiracy of these governors.”

  The NULGE president said: “The wise decision for the governors, if they will understand, is to strengthen the local government. Like we always say, strengthening the local government is not about the local government workers. What we need in Nigeria now is stability. What we need now is participatory democracy.”

  He, therefore, called on them to rescind their decision by going along with the wishes of majority of people of Nigeria.

   And Senate President David Mark who presided over the 30-minute ceremony, where the resolutions of the State Assemblies were submitted to the National Assembly, raised issues about the proposal to separate the local councils account from State accounts and ensured that funds meant for local councils get to them directly instead of making them dependent on states. 

    On noticing that no mention was made of this particular proposal by Ikon, Mark assured that the pursuit of LG Council autonomy is still realisable in the life of the Seventh Senate, even as he commended the State Assemblies for mustering enough courage to approve financial autonomy themselves.

   “I have not read the areas where you got the required figure to approve, but one of the other area we seek your approval is Local Government autonomy. I don’t know if you have the courage to do it, but if you didn’t, it is a continuous exercise; if that is not passed, be rest assured that it will be passed before we all leave the National Assembly”, Mark said.

   Briefing the National Assembly on the details of some of the resolutions, Ikon had said:

   “Let me announce that we have exceeded the required figure for financial autonomy for state legislature. We have also met the required figure for separation of the Office of the Attorney General of the Federation from the Office of the Minister of Justice. I hope that sections not agreed to may find relevance in the future”.

   The issue of granting autonomy to local government areas by abolishing the state and LG account system has always generated serious crisis between the National Assembly and state governors because the latter see it as an attempt to whittle down their political power over the LGA.

  The argument has been that once LGAS are given financial autonomy, the capacity of governors to keep them subservient is drastically reduced. At least the present system makes chairmen of LGA to always go cap-in-hand to their governors to collect funds that were constitutionally allocated to them, a situation that most governors enjoy and cherish so much, as they believe in the saying that “He who pays the piper dictates the tune.”

  At the peak of the debate on the matter, Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano State and the Aminu Tambuwal-led House of Representatives had engaged in a very fierce media war in which the former accused the latter of seeking to instigate LGAs against state governors.

   Kwankwaso had, in explaining why state governors were opposed to the proposed autonomy for local governments, said the governors do not want autonomy for local governments to ensure a prudent management of resources. He said the governors would also oppose any move to abolish the Joint Account System being operated by states and LGAs.

   He stated: “Under normal circumstance, a governor should understand the issue of development more than the chairmen of the local government, especially in this part of the country. Before we came, local governments were not paying salaries; they were just sharing the money.     So, for anyone to come and say they are sending money to local governments directly in Kano is destroying what we have already built together with the local governments in Kano. And who says local governments are complaining?

  “We (the governors) are in favour of the joint account. Of course, if I am not in favour of it, I don’t see today how each of the local governments working together with us will construct five kilometres of dualised road in addition to all other projects we are doing.”

   But in its response, the House alleged that the control of LG funds by state governments was responsible for the high level of corruption in the states.

  The House of Representatives’ statement, which was signed by the chairman of the House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Zakari Mohammed, read in part:

   “Our attention has been drawn to a recent media interview, where the governor of Kano, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, gave a lot of misleading conceptions about the Seventh House of Representatives stand on local government autonomy among other things.

  “The issue of local government autonomy, as far as Nigerians are concerned, is long overdue, arising from our public session as true representatives of the people. Our constituents do not agree with the current status, where local government funds are being pilfered by governors, including Governor Kwankwaso, at the expense of the people and chairmen, who are seen as mere boys for the job.

   “I challenge the Kano State governor to tell people of his state and Nigerians how these funds are managed in Kano since he came to office. We would certainly not accept a situation where governors turn themselves to demi gods in the name of joint accounts. It is only in Nigeria that an elected governor of a state would speak to the media frontally, eroding democratic ideals of which he is a beneficiary.

   “It is saddening to note that local government elections have not been held in some states since 1999. I wonder what sort of government states are running. Kwankwaso should realise that the current unitary federalism that is being propagated by him and his colleagues is responsible for the high number of anti-graft cases against governors on corruption.”

   The LG autonomy proposal has been so unlucky that not even the governors of the main opposition party now called ‘Progressive governors’ could support it. As early as August last year, when the two chambers of the National Assembly were concluding the reports on the constitution amendment Bill, the All Progressives’ Congress (APC) governors had laid a siege to block the move to grant the third tier of government such level of autonomy that might rob them (state governors) of their political powers.

   To that extent, they gathered in Lafia, the Nasarawa State capital, to deliberate on the common threat. Rising from that meeting, they kicked against the proposed constitutional amendment to grant autonomy to local governments in the country, saying the power over third tier government rests with the state Houses of Assembly.

  The governors, who were in Lafia, Nasarawa State capital, for their maiden Governors’ Forum meeting, disclosed this in their communiqué read by the then Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State.

   They argued that granting autonomy to the third tier of government would undermine the essential principles of true federalism, stressing that the power to take any decision relating to local government councils is vested in the state Houses of assembly and not the National Assembly.

   In attendance at the meeting were: Governors Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State, Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti, Rauf Aregbesola of Osun, Kashim Shetima of Borno, Abdulaziz Tariff of Zamfara and Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo.

   Others were: Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun, Adams Oshiomole of Edo and the host governor, Tanko Al-Makura of Nasarawa State and his deputy, Damishi Luka. Governor Ibrahim Geidam of Yobe State was absent, while Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State was represented by his deputy, Prince Eze Maduemere.

   However, Governor Fashola of Lagos State has explained why the governors decided that the National Assembly should not tamper with the provisions of the constitution on local governments, saying it is the duty of states to create and control the councils.

  Fashola said what should concern Nigerians is that good elections should take place in the local governments to ensure good governance.

   According to him, the voices of the governors should matter on any issue concerning local governments. He insisted that states should continue to supervise joint accounts.

    An interesting dimension to the LG autonomy controversy recently came from the Kano State Chapter of the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT), which prayed the State Assemblies to halt the move to grant financial autonomy to the third tier of government.

 The Kano State teachers’ argument was premised on the assumption that scrapping the LG, State joint account and granting direct funding to local governments would be dangerous for the education system in Nigeria, especially primary education.

  Chairman of the state chapter of NUT, Comrade Muhammad Abubakar Hambali, at a press conference said primary education almost collapsed when it was under the control of the local governments, as it was never on the priority list of councils.

  He said: “Between 1990 and 1994, local governments did not give priority to primary education, despite the fact that their allocation from the federation account was increased from 15 to 20 per cent to ensure that they comfortably assist the state government in the payment of salaries of primary school teachers.

  “Virtually all of them owed teachers salaries for about six to 12 months. The situation attracted incessant strikes, which resulted in near-collapse of primary education in Nigeria.” 

  According to him, the union is fighting to ensure that primary education remains under the state government, and that teachers’ salaries were paid by the states directly.

   The union also urged members of state Houses of Assembly to ensure that the status quo was maintained.