By Michael Chibuzo
If there is any living politician who has had the most visible impacts on the governance structure of Nigeria and that of many subnational entities, it is the incumbent President of Nigeria, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. From the birth of the Fourth Republic in 1999, he began his quest for a federalism that will suit Nigeria’s peculiarities. Occupying the governorship seat of Nigeria’s economic heartbeat – Lagos, gave him all the problems he needed to serve as his motivation.
Bola Ahmed Tinubu knew from the onset that he needed to travel through roads that none had travelled before then if he was to make anything close to excellence out of Lagos, which was fast deteriorating into a crumbling, decaying, chaotic and endangered mega city. A lot has been said about the many novel administrative innovations that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu put in place in Lagos, which eventually became models for other states and even the federal government to adopt. However, I want to dwell on his impact in our national conversation of federalism, or what people erroneously call “true federalism”.
In 1999, Nigeria retained the federal system of government after the 1999 Constitution Debate Co-ordinating Committee (CDCC) adopted the 1979 constitution with some modifications. Even though the military midwifed the process of enacting the 1999 constitution, the entire deliberations were anchored by civilians from across the country with the constitution committee chaired by Justice Niki Tobi.
The 1999 constitution much like the 1979 constitution tilted towards a stronger and very powerful central government and weaker federating units. This is evident in the fact that while the 1979 Constitution had 67 items on the exclusive legislative list, and 12 items on the concurrent list, the 1999 Constitution, had 68 items on the exclusive list – an increase by 1 item, but retained the same 12 items on the concurrent list just like in the 1979 constitution that firmly entrenched the unitary system of government in Nigeria.
It was not long therefore before frictions arose between the federal government and some of the states, especially Lagos over the operation and interpretation of the 1999 constitution. Tinubu needed to revamp the revenue base of Lagos State through any means necessary in order to have enough funds to tackle the mountain of problems facing the abandoned former federal capital territory. He also needed to stray into critical areas such as electricity generation that seemed to be reserved for the central government alone courtesy of the exclusive legislative list.
He equally needed to find ways to aggressively combat crime across Lagos even when the police was highly inefficient and under the control of the central government. Crucially, Tinubu needed to make the grassroot feel the touch of government more. A state with a population of around 13 million back then had only 17 Local Government Areas.
Unfortunately for Governor Tinubu, he met stiff resistance and confrontation from the Obasanjo-led central government, at every turn. For example, to address electricity challenges in Lagos, Tinubu began Nigeria’s first independent power plant in partnership with Enron. Obasanjo frustrated it as it was an attempt to challenge the monopoly of the inefficient NEPA. All Governor Tinubu wanted was a bulk power purchase agreement with the FG after building the IPP, which will allow Lagos choose where the power its IPP generates would be distributed and also allowing for collection of market reflective tariffs from Lagosians to ensure sustainability. Obasanjo said no, yet was clueless on how to give Lagos enough electricity at federal government determined tariffs.
Another move by President Bola Tinubu during his time as Governor of Lagos State that tested the strings of federalism in Nigeria was his creation of 37 extra local government areas in line with Section 8(3) of the 1999 constitution, which he later rechristened local council development areas (LCDAs) following the refusal of the PDP-dominated national assembly to complete the process as stipulated in sections 8(5) and (6) of the constitution. His reward for daring to activate section 8(3) of the constitution was the stoppage by President Obasanjo of statutory revenue allocations due to the original 17 local government areas in Lagos state from the federation account.
Governor Bola Tinubu dragged the federal government to the Supreme Court and Lagos State eventually emerged victorious. However, the LCDAs were not given the status of full LGAs by the federal government. Lagos State rather retained them as quasi local government councils and created a framework for them to operate and have been allocating revenues to them from the state treasury. Other states later copied the Lagos LCDA template.
However, as our democratic journey progressed, loopholes in our federalism became constantly exploited by elected officials, which brought cries of returning to ‘true federalism’ or more commonly, restructuring our federalism. Unfortunately over the past decade, we have seen how complex it is to actually “restructure” anything in Nigeria especially one that would require constitutional amendments. President Jonathan could only set up a Political Confab but was unable to implement any of the Confab’s recommendations.
President Buhari came and tried to give full financial autonomy to the state Houses of Assembly and the judiciary through the use of executive order in 2020 since some of the governors themselves had influenced their rubber stamp state legislature to reject financial autonomy for themselves in a previous round of far-reaching constitutional amendments! The governors, including many who always preach “true federalism” and restructuring went to the Supreme Court and shot down the Executive Order 10 by President Buhari.
Same resistence from the governor greeted the move to grant full financial autonomy to local government areas using the instrumentality of the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU). It therefore came as unexpected news when President Bola Tinubu’s administration through the Attorney-General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi (SAN) sued the 36 States over the issue of Local Government autonomy.
President Tinubu through the AGF wants the Supreme Court to rule that states cannot run the local government areas with appointed or Caretaker Committees. In essence, the local government must always be led by democratically elected officials. The President also is also seeking the nod of the Supreme Court to withhold FAAC allocations to LGAs without democratically elected local government administration as a way of forcing them to ensure the conduct of LGA elections whenever it is due. Lastly, even where there is a democratically elected local government administration, President Tinubu wants the Supreme Court to empower the federal government to transfer statutory revenues from FAAC directly to the local government accounts instead of the State Joint Local Government Accounts where the governors are always waiting by the gate.
A lot of State governments immediately resisted the move by the federal government to free local government councils from their clutches and have been arguing against the prayers sought by the Attorney-General before the Supreme Court. The states are arguing that there are supposed to be only two federating units – the federal and states, and as such the federal government cannot prevent the states from disburse funds entering the State Joint Local Government accounts to their LGAs in line with their own sharing formula.
It is safe to say that the federal government led by a man who understands a couple of things about federalism may have trapped the state governors in a narrow gorge. By taking the states to the Supreme Court, the FG has indirectly forced the states to lay out their positions on the local government system in clear terms before the Supreme Court and invariably before Nigerians.
What this means is that, regardless of what the Supreme Court rules, the structure of the Nigerian federation will witness a significant improvement. For example, if the Supreme Court rules in favour of the federal government, it will be a massive strengthening of our federalism with the local government firmly entrenched and protected as the third tier of government from the domination of state governors. That can bring back effective governance at the grassroot and fill a lot of vacuum at that level, which has been negatively impacting the entire federation in the form insecurity, out of school children, poor primary healthcare facilities, near absence of basic community infrastructure etc.
If on the other hand, the states emerge victorious and the Supreme Court sustains their argument that the local government is not a proper federating unit but rather under the states’ jurisdiction to deal as they deem fit, then it opens the door wide open for the President to send an executive constitutional amendment bill that clearly specifies the FG and the states as the federating units as espoused by the governors while leaving matters concerning the local government system in the hands of each state House of Assembly to determine their fate.
The constitutional ammendment would also alter the sharing formula of revenue from the federation account. Since the federal government and states are now the recognised federating units, they are therefore the only ones to benefit from revenues accruing to the federation account. The revenue share of the states would then be increased to make up for their increased responsibilities. This way, the states would no longer treat the LGA FAAC allocations as dark money that is not accounted for anywhere. Checkmate.
From the above scenarios, it is evident that President Bola Tinubu is gradually moving towards restructuring our federalism. Already, power, correctional centers have become decentralised. The President is favourably disposed to state police and reviewing the revenue sharing formula in favour of states. There is also a proposal from the Tinubu administration to scrap the highly inefficient state independent electoral commissions (SIECs) and transfer the duties of conducting LGA elections to INEC.
The next couple of years would surely be eventful because Nigeria now has a man that knows how to play the restructuring game with clinical efficiency as President and he also has a man not afraid to take up landmark legal battles as Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister for Justice.