CACOL Hails Tinubu, Supreme Court On Local Govt Autonomy

The Centre for Anti-corruption and Open Leadership, CACOL, has congratulated President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for securing the Supreme Court judgment affirming the financial autonomy of Nigeria’s 774 local governments noting that it is a right step in his attempt at delivering his party’s promise of restructuring the country.

In a release issued by CACOL and signed by Tola Oresanwo, the anti-corruption organization’s Director, Administration and Programmes on behalf of its Chairman, Mr. Debo Adeniran, he stated, “It would be recalled that the Attorney General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Federal Government, seeking to grant full autonomy and direct funding to all 774 local government councils in the country. We are delighted by the news that the Supreme Court has finally declared that it is unconstitutional for state governors to hold funds allocated for local government administrations.”

We viewed the landmark judgment as the best gift given to Nigeria and Nigerians even as the whole of Africa marks the Africa Anti-Corruption Day with the theme: Effective Whistleblowers Protection Mechanism: A Critical Tool in the Fight Against Corruption.

It is a known fact the local government constitutes the most critical level of government in the move for sustainable national development. Over the years, national development has been canvassed to take off from the grassroots as the local government is widely known as a vital instrument for rural transformation and machinery for effective delivery of socio-economic services to the grassroots people.

It is our belief that local government fiscal autonomy would promote peace and security in the country, because the people at rural communities understand their terrain better and know how to deploy resources towards tackling security challenges. It would also allow steady development that had been stifled at the local government level to be revitalized thereby delivering optimal dividends of democracy to the grassroots people.

Moreover, it is generally believed that local authorities play key roles towards nation building, but unfortunately the third tier of government had over time been neglected and undervalued. This Supreme Court judgment granting financial autonomy to local government is a step in the right direction and we hope it would play a significant role in strengthening grassroots administration in the country. 

Granting financial autonomy is a path to toe going by its ability to curb corruption and opaqueness in government. Since local government are the closest link to members of the grassroots who are supposed to elect their representatives that would govern them, it is expected that the people would now beam their searchlights on the activities of the local government administrations, when they “see something, they would say something” thereby serving as whistleblowers. The local authorities also would not have any excuse for non-performance of their statutory roles since they are now the direct recipients of their funds from the federation account.  

Mr. Debo Adeniran further said “We at CACOL would therefore like to commend the Supreme Court for this landmark judgment. We have posited on several occasions that state governments should be scrapped. This is because they are meddlesome interlopers in the governing arrangement in the country. The state governments have been using the instrumentality of the Joint Account Allocation Committee (JAAC) to steal from the local government funds.

The Federal and Local Government Authorities are more than enough to manage the country effectively. We would also like to use this medium to make known our support for any move that is backed by law to strengthen the local government and give it the needed autonomy for it to deliver the dividends of democracy to the people.”