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By Emmanuel Onwubiko
“Mere good governance is not enough; it has to be pro-people and pro-active. Good governance is putting people at the center of development process.” – Narendra Modi. Local councils all around the world are the nearest agency of governance to the grass roots just as if societal development of any sort is to become sustainable, good governance standards must as a matter of necessity be ingrained, deeply activated and profoundly animated in the governance processes that are obtained at the local government area councils. In Nigeria, the fundamental reason for the establishment of governance at the local council levels, isn’t so much different from why for instance there is local council governance institutions in civilised democracies including the United Kingdom also known as Great British. The aim in summary is to give back ownership of government to the people who essential own the sovereignty of the nation State.
From the benefits hindsight, I am aware that in the United Kingdom for instance, the place of the local council to the population is so much important to such a level that most of the citizens may not even need to take cases of lack of development to the Prime minister of Great Britain who is the head of government in the United Kingdom. Local government structures ought to be piloted by the people who are domiciled within the territorial jurisdiction. To put it contextually, political scholars say England has a mixed system of either single tier local government in the form of Unitary authorities London boroughs and metropolitan district councils or two tier local government with Country Councils as the upper tier and district or borough Councils as the lower tier (www.clgf.org.uk). On the face of it, the territorial administration of England seems extremely complex; but in reality it is fairly simple compared to that of many Countries, says experts. Whereas a Country like Germany has four levels of administration-state, “lander,” district, and municipality in GB’ there are only one or two levels of local government called local authorities. Apart from this some minor and strictly local functions are delegated to parish councils which most often are in the hands of volunteers. The precise structure of local government varies according to the nature of the territories, the experts say.(www.about-britain.com). In much of England, there are county and district councils. Elsewhere, there is just a single tier of unitary authorities. County councils take responsibility for things like social services, education, roads and waste disposal. District councils take on roles such as housing, planning, parking and street cleaning. On many issues, while local government delivers the services, it is central government in London that decides what the services should be.
The term ‘local government’ refers to the councils that deliver local services in each part of the country. The current system of local government is quite complex, with different arrangements in place in different parts of the country. In some parts of England there are two tiers of local government: county councils and district councils. Counties have some functions and districts have others (with a small amount of overlap). Counties are bigger than districts. So, in each county council area, there will be several district councils – normally between 5 and 12. In other areas there are single-tier ‘unitary authorities’, which have all the functions of counties and districts. For the most part, larger cities have unitary authorities and rural areas have two tiers. For example, in Hampshire, the cities of Portsmouth and Southampton have unitary authorities, but the rest of the county has a two-tier system. In Yorkshire, similarly, Sheffield, Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham are all unitary authorities, whereas most of North Yorkshire has both a county council and district councils. But this is not a universal pattern. For instance, the Isle of Wight, Wiltshire, and the East Riding of Yorkshire all have unitary authorities even though they are mainly rural. Councils cover widely differing areas in terms of geography and population. In recent years, governments of all colours have sought to promote fewer, larger councils. They have believed that abolishing several small districts and replacing them with a unitary authority would bring ‘economies of scale’. The evidence of this is variable from across the country, but it is fair to say that merging councils tends to save only a very small percentage of costs, probably less than 1%. County councils generally cover populations of between 500,000 and 1.2 million. District councils tend to cover populations of 70,000 up to 180,000. Unitary authorities typically cover populations of 100,000 up to 1 million. How councils are organised? To this key question here is how the expert responds. Expert say councillors are elected to each of these types of authority, for four-year terms. Different councils have different arrangements for making decisions: In some councils, committees of councillors run the main council services and make all the major decisions on budgeting and priorities. Other councils have a ‘cabinet’ system, where councillors choose a leader for a four-year term and this person then appoints a series of ‘portfolio holders’ – similar to government ministers. The rest of the councillors organise themselves into committees, monitoring the performance of the portfolio holders. In sixteen councils in England, instead of a council leader chosen by councillors, a directly elected mayor appoints a cabinet.
What the aforementioned facts about British local Councils demonstrate, is the initial statement I made that local councils are in place to take developments to the grass roots. Fundamentally, we had to examine the British Local Council structures because politically, Nigeria got her independence from Great Britain. Governance from bottom to top in Nigeria began in those days when the British colonial administrators were around before Nigeria got independence. In Nigeria, local government Councils are as old as Nigeria itself because before the October 1st 1960 independence that Nigeria got from Britain, Nigeria was ruled by the colonial government and the local government was called the administration system or Native authority. However from the period that Nigeria got political independence up until 2022, the administration of the local councils have undergone divergent legislative reforms with the sole aim of devolving certain powers to the Councils. All these local government reforms were basically targeted at delivering autonomy to those who govern their local councils for the benefits of the grassroots. But one of thewonders of the World is that whereas in other jurisdictions, local councils are being strengthened to give more powers to the decision and policy makers at the grassroots, but in Nigeria, the governors have become major obstacles to local council autonomy and the question then is why do governors dread local government autonomy. I said earlier that in Great British, local government Councils seems to be closer to the majority of the populace than even the Central Parliament in Westminster. In Nigeria, local councils are deliberately being sabotaged to become farther and farther from the people at the grassroots. In Great Britain, the elections that take place at the different local councils to a very great extent, tells you which of the political and ideological platforms that could emerge as the party in government. One of the things that fascinates me about the local councils in Britain is the existence of local council flats whereby most poor people hire under greatly subsidized costs. The local councils maintains their roads. And recently, the Parliament in Britain made a law permitting the Councils to collect fines from violators of traffic rules. Coming down to Nigeria, the major political conversation is why the governors who should be more interested in enthroned autonomy at the LG levels to take most of the burdens of building infrastructural projects away from their control, are the major encumbrance to local government autonomy. The governors even went as far as instituting a suit in the Federal High Court to frustrate the realisation of local government funding autonomy.
Few days back, governors of the 36 states of the federation met with the issue of losing the suit against financial autonomy for local governments topping the agenda. Acting under the aegis of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, NGF, the governors in a statement issued in Abuja by the NGF Head of Media and Public Affairs, Abdulrazaque Bello-Barkindo, said the lingering issue of the local governments’ financial autonomy that had become topical nationwide since on Monday, might form part of the brief by the NGF chairman and Ekiti State governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi. The statement read: ” Governors of the 36 states have been invited to a meeting according to a statement issued from the office of the Director General of the NGF, Mr Asishana Bayo Okauru.
Onwubiko is head of the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria
