|
EL-RUFAI ON FRIDAY
Local Governments: The Missing Tier of Government By Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai
In the year 2011, the 774 Local Governments and the 6 Area Councils
(LGAs) in Nigeria received almost N1trillion (about $7billion) from
the Federation Account, which is equivalent to the entire annual
budgets of Burkina Faso, Rwanda, Burundi and Togo combined. These
transfers were to enable them carry out their functions, which
include the administration of primary education and primary health
care, construction of markets and boreholes, and rural development
in general. Most Nigerians would agree that is little or nothing to
show for this huge transfer of free cash to the LGAs. It has not
always been this bad.
Between 1955-1965, LGAs (or Native Authorities as they were then
called) were responsible for about 12 per cent of the public
expenditure in the country, equivalent to almost 10 per cent of the
GDP. But today, they gulp about 21 per cent of our national revenue
without commensurate results for the subventions that they collect
from the federation. And worst still, with few exceptions, they now
entirely depend on transfers from the centre for their own
expenditures. They no longer generate revenues like in the first
republic and believe they are created simply to collect monthly
allocations to spend on politicians, thugs and families.
It would
be an understatement to say that the LGAs performance of their core
functions has been disappointing, nearly criminal.
The
primary responsibility of local governments as enshrined in the
constitution is rural, urban and community development as outlined
earlier. However, rather than working to reduce poverty by providing
these services to their people, they end up just paying salaries of
primary school teachers, and not much more.
While
our LGAs contribute a negligible percent of our GDP and employ less
than 2 per cent of the employed population, in the United States,
counties, which are the equivalent of our local governments
contribute about 20 percent of the GDP and employ about 10 percent
of the employed population. Everything from elementary schools to
international airports are developed and under the control of
counties, municipalities and city councils in the US!
In South
Africa and Indonesia, local governments have the responsibility to
provide an expansive range of services like those in Nigeria, but
they are largely fiscally and political autonomous, as only about 14
percent of their revenue comes from central government transfers,
compared to the almost 90 percent in Nigeria. Local governments and
council elections are independently conducted without interference
from the provinces. Unlike, Nigeria, countries, taxes constitute by
far the largest source of revenues, comprising on average of 52
percent of total revenues. Council elections are not decided by the
states/provinces, but by community arrangements that guarantee free
and fair emergence of credible leadership. The instances above point
to the direction of reform of our broken and dysfunctional LG
system.
In
preparing this piece, I conducted an informal straw poll of the
perception of the respective LGAs performance on a scale of one to
hundred among my circle of friends, relations and work colleagues.
It is admittedly unscientific and the sample small, but quite
insightful. First, local governments were scored about 10 per cent
in the performance of their five core constitutional functions and
the sample believed that they show no sign of improvement. Secondly,
the overall performance of LGAs has slipped considerably from about
40 per cent in 2005 when the average LG got N60 million monthly from
the centre, to less than 10 percent in 2011, when they got an
average of N100 million monthly from the Federation Account!. What I
learnt from the sample is that most LGAs only pay primary school
teachers' salaries and nothing more out of their core functions. No
respondent gave any LGAs more than 40 percent in any service
delivery area - a failing grade in any exam anywhere in the world.
It is therefore no surprise that our rural areas are so
underdeveloped.
It was
General Murtala Muhammad regime that inaugurated and subsequently
accepted the recommendations of the Dasuki Local Government Reforms
Committee in 1975. The administration promulgated the enabling law
effective on October 1, in 1976 to entrench Local Governments as an
independent and self-accounting tier of government. The reform's two
most important priorities were to reduce development inequality
(between urban and rural areas) and to increase political
accountability across the country. We then had 360 LGAs in the 19
states of Nigeria.
To carry
out these efforts, the 1979 constitution assigned to the LGAs some
substantial resources, along with political and economic
responsibilities. They were required to provide most public services
with the exception of higher education and security. The essence was
to create strong political accountability, democracy and a
sustainable political culture.
What went
wrong with the Local Government reforms? Why has the responsiveness
of LGAs to the needs of their citizens been deteriorating as their
revenue-dependency increasing? And how did Commissioners of Local
Government become the best friends of State Governors, almost
always, governors-in-waiting under this democratic experiment?
The
reforms failed because the federal government itself and the states,
in pursuit of political maneuverings and a share-the cake mentality
changed all that. First, we allowed the number of LGAs to spiral to
450, then 78), while the number of states nearly doubled from 19 to
36 plus FCT. Resources had to be more thinly spread across a larger
number of fiscally-weak, often incompetent administrative units.
Then, more recently, in what looks like a reversal of our federalism
and Constitution, the PDP-led central government for the past 10
years has implemented a policy, which rather than encourage LGAs to
provide affordable services for their localities by strengthening
their political and fiscal autonomies, has embraced the opposite:
annexing them to the state governments and treating them like
fiefdoms instead of independent third tier of government.
The two
culprits that enabled this "annexation" of LGAs in the 1999
constitution are the creation of State-Local Joint Account and the
State "independent" electoral commissions! These have undermined
economic development and political accountability. Obviously,
neither the states that have swallowed the LGAs by collecting their
monthly subventions nor the local governments themselves are
offering any core service to Nigerians. These sections of the
constitution need to be revisited.
There
also seem to be a lack of commitment from the federal government to
make local governments truly functional. A wide range of complex
constitutional and technical issues needs to be addressed. There are
confusions about the roles and responsibilities entrusted to local
governments, some of which they lack the technical and
administrative capacity to execute. Limited legitimacy and legal
obstacles hinder them from exercising many of their functions. Thus
the impact of the whole process in terms of service delivery, local
economic development, poverty alleviation and entrenchment of
democracy is doubtful and probably not feasible at all under the
current constitutional framework.
Effective LGA administration can strengthen democracy in Nigeria,
improve the quality and cohesiveness of government, entrench
democratic values, improve the effectiveness and efficiency of
service delivery and create an enabling environment for local
economic development.
The
main advantage of LGAs is that due to their relative proximity to
people, scale and scope limitations, they can be more efficient (or
at least as responsive) at providing certain public services
compared to states and federal government if properly organized and
resourced.
Local governments have a significant impact on population and
employment growth of their areas of jurisdictions. How the
grassroots are governed matters for local economic growth. They
could also stimulate income growth for the people if they perform
their core functions effectively, especially in the current economic
crises marked by high
unemployment. We need to economically empower more people in the
rural areas, create an environment for good jobs (formal and
informal) and enable decent wages, benefits, good living conditions
and prosperity. Local governments must create job programs that take
advantage of the competitive advantage and resource endowment of
each community. A city, town or village (by community efforts) can
create jobs in both the private and public sectors to put people to
work to grow the local economy. The Town and Village Enterprises
TVEs of China, floated by local governments are good models of rural
industrialization and employment opportunities.
There
is the need to constitutionally mandate LGAs to invest more on
projects that actually create a large number of good jobs for their
people while providing them with the crucial services. LGAs dish out
billions of naira in incentives as part of their poverty eradication
and empowerment efforts, but with few or no sustainable jobs to show
for them. They need to prioritize direct public spending by local
governments on programmes that stimulate economic activity and
therefore create jobs. Some of these initiatives include building
and rehabilitation of infrastructures, investments in access roads,
and renovating/upgrading of schools facilities, health centres,
motor parks and markets.
For
LGAs to be effective, the overall governance system should
essentially have the following features: a balanced set of
political, administrative and fiscal powers. They must be able to
play their role in an overall conducive structure of democratic
governance and practices, e.g. with fair and free elections that
give council members legitimacy. Intergovernmental linkages should
be adequate, including redefined federal and state governments roles
that will allow sustainable local development. Processes for
elaborating development policies at local government levels must be
well articulated. There should be strong upward, downward and
horizontal accountability within the governance system of the local
governments. This should not only ensure improved service delivery
and transparency, but also offer protection against elite capture
and corruption. There must be active citizenship and empowered
communities so that all groups and individuals can be properly
represented. People must have access to information and be able to
express their views to achieve a good balance between federal, state
and local governance processes. Better quality people - at
political, technocratic and administrative levels need to be
available to work in our LGAs, and more experienced,
"retired-but-contented" public servants run for LGA positions.
Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai
|