Supreme Court Grants Local Governments’ Financial Autonomy

Reported by Ayooluwa Afolabi

The Supreme Court has affirmed the financial autonomy of Nigeria’s 774 local governments.

In its judgment on Thursday, a seven-member panel of the court unanimously upheld the suit brought by the federal government to strengthen the independence of local governments in the country.

A member of the panel, Emmanuel Agim, who delivered the court’s lead judgment, held that the local governments across the country should, from Thursday, receive their allocations directly from the Accountant-General of the Federation.

The new arrangement ordered by the Supreme Court empowers the Accountant-General of the Federation to bypass the state governments in the monthly disbursement of federal allocations to the local governments.

The local government is Nigeria’s third tier of government, the level of government closest to the grassroots.

But for over two decades, local governments have been almost crippled in most states, where the governors seize their federal allocations and only release funds to them piecemeal to barely keep them going.

The long-running funding arrangement, upended by Thursday’s Supreme Court judgment, had helped governors exert absolute control over the local governments.

The governors’ control includes arbitrary dissolution of elected local government executives, despite repeated court decisions adjudging such action as illegal.

The lack of independence of the local governments also stemmed from the governors’ overbearing influence on other institutions, such as their states’ independent electoral commission.

With that, the governors’ political parties fielding their hand-picked candidates always recorded near 100 percent victory in local elections.

This has ignited calls for transferring the responsibility of conducting local government elections to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The Supreme Court’s Thursday judgment includes far-reaching decisions that will significantly reposition local government administration in the country.

Before granting the prayers sought in the suit, the court rejected the objection of the state governments to affirm the right of the Attorney-General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi, to institute the suit.

The Supreme Court invoked its original jurisdiction as the court of first instance to hear the suit.