MOST Nigerians have not fully addressed their minds to the latest effort to amend the 1999 Constitution.

This is because every session of the National Assembly has always taken it upon itself to tinker with the Constitution, yet the major pillars of the nation’s grundnorm – centralised federalism – remain unchanged.

One issue which the ongoing alteration seeks to address is the matter of autonomy for the Judiciary, the Legislature and the Local Government Areas. Granting the two arms of government – Legislature and Judiciary – full financial autonomy to facilitate their independence is in tune with the Constitution itself. At the federal level, the Legislature and Judiciary enjoy relative independence, except in instances where their leaderships voluntarily surrender their independence to the Executive for whatever gain. But at the state level, their independence is hampered by the fact that they depend on the state purse, which is controlled by the Executive, to operate.

On Monday, February 28, 2022, the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, held a rally calling on the National Assembly to approve full autonomy for the Legislature, Judiciary and the LGAs by ensuring their direct fund allocation from the Federation Account.

While we agree with the need to free the lawmaking and adjudicatory arms of government from the Executive to ensure effective performance and constitutional checks, we call for more thought to be given in ensuring a more effective local government administration.

Local government autonomy has been widely peddled as the touchstone for effective governance of the grassroots.

The appropriation of power over the local government allocations from the Federation Account by the governors with the connivance of the state assemblies has destroyed the essence of local government.

Governors have also deprived the grassroots electorate of their right to elect their own local government leadership by ensuring that their parties always win. Local government elections have become the means by which governors plant their surrogates to enable them control local government funds.

One of the problems this spawns is the prevalence of the “ungoverned spaces” syndrome and attendant security breaches all over the country. It is often argued that allocating funds directly to the LGAs will enable elected leaders at that level to govern effectively. But before this autonomy is granted, we must ponder a few questions.

Will this not turn LGA chairmen into little “governors” with the way they will spend their allocations? Will this not lead to running battles between the governors and some LG chairmen? Won’t it open new crisis points?

We are for true federalism, where the federating units determine their local government affairs with inputs from the local communities for effective and accountable governance.

If, however, LG autonomy is the way forward, there must be enough inbuilt checks and balances.