*Photo:Kehinde Yusuf*
What is federalism? To answer this question, let us look at Princeton University’s Encyclopedia Princetoniensis, which has an entry on “Federalism and federation” authored, ostensibly around 2015, by Brendan O’Leary, a distinguished Professor of Political Science and, according to his biography, “the inaugural winner of the Juan Linz prize of the International Political Science Association, for research on federalism and democracy in multi-national states.”
According to Professor O’Leary, “a federation may be defined as a political system in which at least two territorial levels of government share sovereign constitutional authority over their respective division.” Federalism could therefore be described as a political philosophy or system which recognises two or more territorial levels or tiers.
The Nigerian federation, as indicated in the 1999 constitution, has three tiers: the federal, the state and the local government. Encyclopaedia Britannica, in an entry on Nigeria, written by Toyin O. Falola and Reuben Kenrick Udo, and last updated on 17 July, 2024, observes: “The functions of the government at the local level were usurped by the state government until 1988, when the federal government decided to fund local government organizations directly and allowed them for the first time to function effectively.” The direct transmission of local government funds to them was later terminated.
According to former Vice-President Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, “the decision by the Federal Government to consolidate disbursements of local councils’ revenues into the state government accounts was a decision that was borne out of politics of hasty compromise.” This decision has resulted in a slew of problems.
Since part of the functions of the Supreme Court is to interpret provisions of the constitution and resolve disputes between different tiers of government, the Federal Government approached the Court in respect of the undermining of the autonomy of local governments by state governments.
On 11 July, 2024, the Court ruled in favour of the Federal Government, as follows, in the lead judgement delivered by Justice Emmanuel Agim: “It is the position of this court that the federation can pay local governments allocations directly to the local governments or through the states. In this case, since paying them through the states has not worked, justice demands that local governments allocations from the federation account should henceforth be paid directly to the local governments.”
Justice Agim further declared: “I hold that the states’ retention of local government funds is unconstitutional.” Moreover, the Supreme Court ruled that it is illegal for state governments to dissolve elected local government administrations and replace them with Caretaker Committees, and that local governments run by such constitutionally-aberrant unelected committees are not entitled to allocations from the federation account until democratically-elected officials have been emplaced.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu responded to the judgement as follows: “My administration instituted this suit because of our unwavering belief that our people must have relief and [the] judgement will ensure that it will be only those local officials elected by the people that will control the resources of the people. This judgement stands as a resounding affirmation that we can use legitimate means of redress to restructure our country and restructure our economy to make Nigeria a better place to live in and a fairer society for all of our people.”
The Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, Prince Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, who instituted the suit on behalf of the Federal Government, also said: “I call it local government emancipation judgement … and I hope that local government officials will look at it as an opportunity to develop their various local governments. The ball is in the court of the governors. Let us see what they will come out with, but the judgement is clear as to what they should do. The judgement is clear as to what consequences will be attached to failure or refusal to follow the judgement of the Supreme Court, which takes immediate effect.”
Even opposition leader Alhaji Atiku Abubakar declared: “The court’s ruling is a step in the right direction and a major corrective action in greasing the wheels of national development across the country. … I align with the decision of the Supreme Court that the structure of the Nigerian government is portioned in three layers, and of these, the local governments should be centers of development.”
In an unsparing response to the Supreme Court judgement, in a 14 July, 2024 report in The Punch, titled “Tinubu’s govt will be remembered for confronting govs’ criminality against LGs – SAN”, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria and former Dean of the Faculty of Law at Nile University, Abuja, Prof Abdullahi Shehu Zuru, said: “In my view, the verdict was awesome and very unambiguous. … Every cogent observer of our democratic politics will admit painfully that the governors have succeeded in surreptitiously destroying the third tier of government in Nigeria because they have strangulated … the local government. So, what the judgment has done is to resurrect the local governments from the ashes of death.”
Professor Zuru further observed: “Recall that during Ibrahim Babangida’s administration when the local governments were receiving their allocations and had the freedom to budget as well as earmark developmental projects at their level, this created what you might call the economic class at the local government level as there were contractors who were working for the local governments, and supplying foods to schools.” The validity of this claim is established by the fact that you can still see today some of the developmental projects which local government administrations executed before they became financially and logistically hamstrung.
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Tajudeen Abbas, noted that the decades-old efforts by the National Assembly at constitution review, to enhance local government autonomy, a seemingly unrealisable goal, had eventually been rewarded. Specifically, he said: “Today that impossibility became a reality. Everyone is happy and we are looking forward to local governments that will work functionally, and … extend goodwill to their own people undisturbed by the excesses by the state governors.”
The President of the Nigerian Senate, Godswill Akpabio also remarked: “… the Supreme Court has spoken and we have no option than to abide by the Supreme Court ruling. So, I will just call on all states of the federation to respect what the Supreme Court has done and then we will go back to the legislature and see where we can dot the i’s and cross the t’s to ensure the full implementation.”
In spite of the widespread praise of the Supreme Court judgement, there have been strident voices of opposition to or condemnation of the verdict. One interesting thing about these dissenting voices, who range from senior academics to lawyers to governors and to media personalities or even entire media establishments, is that they all, to a large extent, seem to have predicated their condemnation on the claim that the judgement is an affront to the concept of “federalism” or what they call “true federalism”.
In a representative and magisterial articulation of this claim, The Punch editorial of 16 July, 2024 titled “Supreme Court got it wrong on LG autonomy” stated: “In its latest judicial intervention … the Court declared that the government is portioned into three tiers – federal, state, and local. This is a blatant assault on the tenets of federalism. … The Supreme Court erred in its judgement as the LGs have no place in a federal constitution. Therefore, one of the fundamental flaws of the 1999 Constitution is to list the 774 LGs in it. This must be corrected. In federal jurisdictions, such as the United States, India, and Brazil, the constitution recognises only the centre and province/region/state governments. … Thus, the Supreme Court judgement is a conspiracy against federalism.”
Those who oppose or condemn the Supreme Court judgement seem to be unanimous in insisting on the twisting of Nigeria’s legitimate version of federalism to align it with their narrow definition of federalism rather than broadening the definition of federalism to accommodate the Nigerian experience. In a 2017 article by Dr. Dele Babalola titled “50 shades of federalism – Nigeria: A federation in search of federalism,” the author notes: “Federalism, like most Social Science concepts, has no standard definition as it ‘may mean different things to all [people].’” He further observed: “In Nigeria, true federalism means different things to different people. The newfound phrase could be better understood using a geo-political lens.”
In clinging unyieldingly to the narrow concept of federalism, opponents of the Supreme Court judgement on local government autonomy also engage in the fallacy of appeal to authority, by citing equally narrow definitional examples. Moreover, consistent with the logically-weak fallacy of red herring, some of these opponents shift focus and begin to dwell on matters not central to the original or specific issue of debate. They also find ad hominem arguments handy, preferring to engage in abuse rather than logical argument.
The point being made is related to the fact that the precise meanings of words are context-dependent, and as contexts vary, the meanings of words change. Such changes could involve the broadening or narrowing of meaning as conditioned by different epochs or different events. With respect to this phenomenon, Richard Nordquist in Thoughtco.com notes as follows in a 4 November, 2019 article: “Semantic change may also occur when native speakers of another language adopt English expressions [e.g., ‘federalism’] and apply them to activities or conditions in their own social and cultural environment.” In other words, ‘federalism’ is not a semantically-fossilised word, and much of the controversies surrounding the Supreme Court judgement on local government autonomy, with respect to its consistency with the principle or definition of ‘federalism’ or ‘true federalism’, amount to mere grandstanding. Insisting on only the definition of ‘federalism’ as a two-tier political principle or system is therefore semantic tyranny.
If we have any true hope for a redirection of our society for positive growth, the Supreme Court judgement provides a genuine justification. Local governments have been bedridden, and a new medicine has been found which has saved them from outright death. To aid full recovery, local governments must be trained on how to walk again, through robust reorientation programmes for their elected and career officials.
The present state of affairs raises a question: “What can be done to counter the travesty that’s called State Independent Electoral Commission or SIEC-organised local government elections, which are, in many cases, popularity-or-performance-independent, and, in fact, have been referred to as coronations by “Emperor-Governors”?
As the Supreme Court judgement has shown, wisdom never gets so completely used up in the world that we would need to go looking for more in heaven. So says the Yoruba proverb “Ogbón ò kìí tán l’áyé ká wa lo sí òrun.” And what does its English equivalent say? “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”