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Nigerian Federalism And Local Government Autonomy
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Carl Friedrich (1963:35), shares a similar view with K.C Wheare.
According to him, Federalism should be seen as a process by which unity
and diversity are politically organized and this process include all
political phenomena, persons, institutions and ideas. He described a
federation as union of group selves, united by one or more objectives
but retaining their distinctive group level, while association is on the
interpersonal level. He noted that federalism without destroying
themselves that are uniting and is meant to strengthen them in their
mutual relations. Friedrich argued that federalism should be a process.
The process by which a number of separate political communities enter
into arrangements for working out solutions, adopting joint policies and
making joint decisions on joint problems and conversely also the
process by which a unitary political community becomes differential into
a federally organized whole.
Itse Sagay (2003) corroborates with
Wheare by posting that Federalism is; An arrangement whereby political
power within a multinational country are shared between a Federal or
central authority and a number of regionalized governments, in such a
way that each unit, including the central authority, exists as a
government separately and independently from the others, operating
directly on persons and property within its territorial area, with a
will of its own and its own apparatus for the conduct of affairs and
with an authority in some matters exclusive of all others. In a
federation each government enjoys autonomy, a separate existence and
independence of the control of any other government. Each government
exists, not as an appendage of another government but as an autonomous
entity in the sense of being able to exercise its will on the conduct of
its affairs far from the direction by any government.
The above
definition is in line with Wheare’s own stipulation that in the Federal
system, there is no hierarchy of authorities, with the central
government on the others. All governments have a horizontal relationship
with each other.
Another scholar on the discussion of federalism is
Austin Ranny (1993: 789) who sees federalism as a system of government
where power is divided between a national government and several
sub-national governments, each of which is legally supreme on its
assigned sphere. He noted that Federalism was adopted as political
expediency, adding that Federalism has been widely praised as of the
grant American contribution to the art of government
A number of
different nations have adopted it as a way of enabling regions with
sharp different cultures and interest to join together as one nation.
The clearest examples are nations like Australia, Canada, Germany and
Switzerland also in Brazil, India and Mexico.
Osaghie (1990) also
argues that an important characteristic which distinguishes Federal
character systems from non Federal systems is contractual,
non-concentration of power. According to him, in a Federal state, there
is an irrevocable division of power as a product of constitutional
compact among the nationalities or sub-communities that compose the
Federation.
Tekena Tamuno (1989:18), Federalism as a form of
government where the component units of a political organization
participate in sharing powers and functions in a cooperative manner
though the combined forces of ethnic pluralism and cultural diversity,
among others, tend to pull their people apart. Delicate arrangements of
this kind were carefully worked out, provide sufficient room for the
co-existence of centre-seeking and centre fleeing forces, peace, for
lucky communities which achieve and sustain measure of this, under these
arrangements, is not necessarily that of the grave, where people agree
sometimes and disagree sometimes, concerning the goals and means of
co-operative governments of this kind, friction and conflict resolution
is quite possible through the time and effective intervention of
accredited authorities and organs of government.
Professor Attahiru
M. Jega (1999) gave a seemingly elementary but useful definition of
federalism, by saying a federal system is a government in which the
written constitution or an inviolable statutory precedent specifies that
certain fundamental authority adheres to a central government and that
other fundamental authority belongs to smaller areas. (Eligwu, 1996:
88). In this sense, Federalism is essentially about the distribution of
political and economic decision making power among constitutions units
or levels of government. Some inferences can be drawn from the above
literatures on the concept of federalism; the first is that the study of
federalism is still in a state of partial theory with the numerous
writers, each speaking a language particular to him. On close
examination, it can be observed that no fundamental disagreement exists
among the scholar in their divergent approaches to the topic. Each
approach is a narrow perspective of the broad theme and none by itself
explains the totality of the federal concept. For example, Wheare
provides a legal framework of what constitutes a federal constitution,
Livingston looks beyond the surface to the social diversities that the
constitutional divisions of powers is supposed to mirror, while
Friedrich looks intensely at the actual operation of the societal
centripetal and centrifugal forces and how they affect the
constitutional arrangement.
On the whole it could be inferred that
the existing literature that pictures what is federal government and
what is not, remains as blurred as ever. The student of federalism is
therefore in a sort of quandary.
But for the purpose of this study,
the definition as given by K.C. Wheare (1953) would be adopted as a
working definition because it is still not possible except by this
Wheare’s definition to determine the prerequisite of federalism and
basis on which to establish which countries are federal and which are
not.
Local Government
This part will focus on the views of
different scholars which forces us to ask new questions; to consider
views of diverse range of thinkers, and provide access to competing
explanations of what is really Local Government.
Orewa (1992) sees
local government as the lowest unit of administration to whose laws and
regulation, the communities who live in a defined geographical area and
with common social and political ties are subject. The implication of
this in his view is that, the territorial jurisdiction of the local
government has to be clearly determined and defined to enable the
residents of the local government aware of their civic and financial
claim for the provision of service and for protection against health
& hazard. He went further to state that, local government is the
product of decentralized administration. Decentralization per se refers
to the arrangement by which the management of the public affairs of a
country is shared by the central/State provincial and the local
government in such a manner that the local government is given
reasonable scope to raise funds and to use its resource to provide a
range of socio-economic services and establish programmes to enhance the
welfare of those resident in its area of authority. (ibid).
In the view of the United Nations office for public administration
Local
government is a political division of a nation or (in federal system),
state, which is constituted by law, and has control of local affairs,
including the power to impose taxes or exact labour for prescribed
purpose. The government of such an entity is elected or otherwise
locally selected (quoted in Ola 1984:7).
According to Ola (1984) who
is in line with the above assertion, indicates some elements which
precipitate the establishment of local government as the third tier of
government;
-citizen’s participation in the management of local affairs
-efficient and equitable provision of essential service
- Resource mobilization for development purpose
He
went further to explain that local government is a cooperate body which
can sue and can be sued. Thus, it has its own independent legal
existence. Local governments are distinguished from other social
institution due to judicial or legislative powers to make bye-laws and
regulations. It does not make substantial law but bye-laws and
regulation under the power derived from the constitution.
Ogunna
(1976), sees the local government as a political authority which is
purposely created by law or constitution for local communities by which
they manage their local public affairs within the limits.
William
Robson in Mahal (2006) asserts that local government involves the
conception of territorial, non-sovereign community possessing the legal
right and the necessary organization to regulate it own affairs. This in
turn presupposes the existence of a local authority with power to act
independently of external control as well as the participation of the
local community in the administration of its own affairs.
In the 1976
local government reform hand book, local government was defined as
Government at the local level exercised through representative councils
established by law to exercise specific power within defined areas.
These powers should give the council substantial control over local
affairs as well as the staff and institutional and financial power to
initiate and direct the provision of services and to determine and
implement project so as to complement the activities of the state and
federal government in their areas, and to ensure and through devolution
of function to council and through the active participation of the
people and their traditional institutions that local initiatives and
response
to local needs and condition are maximized.
Price (1975:160) sees local government as:
An
attempt to make use of its citizens’ local loyalties by delegating
local function to local administrative bodies, which may be various
type, such as locally elected representative body, a recognized
traditional authority or local representative, with clearly defined
power of the central government.
Drain (2000) in his book “Local
Government Administrationâ€, perceives local government as the lower
level of government responsible for domestic enhancement. To him, he
said development must start from the grassroots with an organized system
and with public enlightment. Development should be every body’s
business, local government is the government close to the people and
that listens to the people. Local government is therefore all about
enhancement and agent of rural or community development.
Odenigwe
(1979) sees the local government in Nigeria as the ultimate agency for
mobilizing citizens and material resource for rural development under
the new system. Local governments are now in a better position to
mobilize, direct and co-ordinate the efforts of the people on rural
development.
Venkataranyaiga and Pattabhiram see the local government as
The
administration of a locality a village, a town, a city or any other
area smaller than the state by a body representing local Inhabitants,
possessing a fairly large amount of authority, raising at least a part
of its revenue through local taxation and spending its income on service
which are regarded as local and therefore distinct from state and
central services.
According to L. Ademolekun and L. Rowland, (1979:1)
sees the local government as a tier of government with formal and
unequivocal recognition of local government as constituting a distinct
level of government with defined boundaries clearly stated functions and
provision. To el-borate on this definition above, being a tier means
that unlike before when local government was placed under the ministry
or department, with limited responsibilities, it is now regarded as the
third level of government and charged with greater and additional
responsibilities of mobilizing, sensitizing and harnessing the human and
material resource at the local level for the development of such
localities. As the third tier of government the local government now
enjoys the following autonomy.
 Staff: the local government can now recruit, pay and discipline their staff through the local government service commission.
 The local government now enjoys high level manpower unlike before.

Financial autonomy: the local government as a third tier of government
now gets its fiscal allocation from revenue allocation and mobilization
commission. It also exercise control over its annual budget.
 Fiscal autonomy: it can now generate its own money through rent, rate and tolls.
From
the assertions of all the scholars reviewed above, it is seen that they
all agree that the local government is a third tier of government and
as such is an agent of rural development.
Local Government Autonomy
There
is a good deal of confusion and misinterpretation to what the term
“autonomy“ connotes, despite its regular usage, yet the real
understanding of the term leaves much to be desired. The numerous
scholars and government functionaries who used the term assumed that
their audience understands the concept furthermore; government’s reform
that is intended to preserve or extend local government autonomy ends up
short of their objectives because the full meaning of the term autonomy
has not been fully explained (Odunfa, 1991). Local government autonomy
is the freedom of the local government to recruit and manage its own
staff, raise and manage its own finances, make polices, laws and provide
services within the limits of its resources and functions without
interference from the federal and state government. The work of
different scholars will be reviewed on the meaning of local government
autonomy.
Nwabueze (1983) defines the autonomy under a federal system
to mean “each government enjoys a separate existence and independence
from the control of the other government. It is an autonomy which
requires just legal and physical existence of an apparatus of government
like a legislative assembly, Governor, Court e.t.c. but that each
government must exist not as an appendage of another government but as
an autonomous entity in the sense of being able to exercise its own will
in the conduct of its affairs free from direction of another
government. According to Nwabueze, autonomy would only be meaningful in a
situation whereby each level of government is not constitutionally
bound to accept dictation or directive from another.
In the view of
the defunct centre for democratic studies local government autonomy
refers to “the relative discretion which local government enjoys in
regulating their own affairs the extent to which local government are
free from the control of the state and federal government in the
management of local affairs. In this contribution on the literature of
autonomy Davey (1991) opines that “local autonomy is primarily concerned
with the question of responsibilities, resources and discretion
conferred on the local authorities. As such discretion and
responsibility at the care of local government it presumes that local
government must poss. the power to take decision independent of external
control within the limits laid at own by the law. It must garner
efficient resumes particularly of finance to meet their responsibilities
put differently lead autonomy is the freedom of independence in clearly
defined issue, are as separate legal identity from other level of
government. In essence, when one talks of local government autonomy in
Nigeria’s policy we refer to the relative independence of local
government control by the state and federal governments. Therefore it is
the nature and structure of transactions or interaction between the
three levels of government that reveals the degree of local government
autonomy.
The autonomy of local government in African countries such
as Nigeria is more a theory than in practice. As Olowu (19988:71)
succinctly puts it:
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