Civil society organisations (CSOs) and informed analysts kicked against the use of caretaker committees in administration of local government councils, in a recent meeting in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Assistant Editor (South South), JOE EZUMA, reports.
Apparently exasperated by the prevalent use of caretaker committees by state governors in the country in place of elected chairmen, the civil society community in Rivers State questioned the relevance of the system in local government administration. Members also faulted the local government administration as currently practised in the country.
The observations were raised at a forum organised by the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) in the South South at which participants noted that there had been drastic departure from the local government reform of 1976 which gave birth to the present 774 councils in the country. The reform was in line with the then General Olusegun Obasanjo/Shehu Yar’Adua agenda of decentralising governance in the country.
The agreement by members of the civil society organisations (CSOs) was that the current situation in the councils failed to sustain the initial enthusiasm and hope of the people on the system as a third tier government.
The discussants blamed state governments for mischievous use of caretaker committees to water down the autonomy of the local government system.
Against the backdrop of the uncertain trend, critics argue that, in practice, there is nothing like local government administration in the country, stressing that that tier of government had been substantially subsumed in the state government.
They therefore call for clear definition of roles between state and local government areas to avoid clashes of interest that are capable of slowing down development endeavours.
“In the real sense of it, there is nothing like clear-cut local government administration, as the states have virtually usurped the responsibilities of the local governments,” the civil society members posit.
Local government administration has been defined as the management of own affairs by the people of a locality. It can also be defined as a political authority for the purpose of dispersing or decentralising political power. The Nigerian guidelines for local government reforms of 1976 defined local government as “government at the local level exercised through representative councils established by law to exercise specific functions within defined areas”.
But recent developments in the polity show tendency by governors at appointing local government administrators rather than allowing the people to choose them through periodic elections. That was the issue the CLO assembled members of the civil society to examine.
The panellists at the forum, however, decried the “unfair distribution of LGAs where states with equal spread and population have unequal number of local governments, and state intrusion in the affairs of local government”.
Paul Arochukwu, a legal practitioner and the lead speaker at the forum, in his paper entitled ‘An X-ray of the Local Government System: Bringing the Local Government Nearer to the People’, punched at the caretaker chairmanship system, arguing that it is a rape of democracy, illegal and unacceptable as it was not contemplated in the Nigerian constitution.
According to him, the concept of the local government has been heavily corrupted and used for political manipulation and economic marginalisation. “Those states who have more local government areas get more money from the centre,” he added, noting, however, that the money end up with the governors who disburse to the councils as if it is a favour.
Because of this bizarre practice, he said, the local government has been turned away from its traditional role of maintaining rural roads, running dispensaries and maternity homes, environmental sanitation, building and maintaining of markets, which they had earlier done effectively before they were tied to the apron strings of the state governments.
Also in his presentation, ‘Resource Justice in the Administration of Local Government in Nigeria’, Dr. Didi Orike, a petroleum engineer, noted that the constitution gives the local government the right to exist and assigned it roles, but that the problem of the system was brought about by the “fraudulent 1999 politicisation” of the system.
Didi noted that over-centralisation of levels of power at the centre robbed the local government of its potency.
“It is expected that under a democratic setting, the local governments should be centres of development, and it is only a democratically-elected government that should be allowed to run the local government,” he remarked, adding that the caretaker council is an aberration, as it is not constitutional.
For Ken Henshaw of the Social Action, the local government is a good concept, but that along the line, it became a mere tool of the state while the local government chairman became a mere lap dog of the state governor.
Henshaw, in his presentation, ‘Establishing Resource Justice in the LGAs in the Niger Delta’, listed several destabilising attacks on the local government.
“The first onslaught on the local government was the reduction of its activities to collecting bicycle licences and other trivial rates. Another blow dealt on the local government was the Joint Account regime which has reduced the local government to mere centres for compensating political errand boys and supporters.
“There is also the state control and lack of independence while in some states local governments are being used to foster a system of brigandage,” he said.
He explained that resource justice means that a fair share of the proceeds of the natural resources is used for the development of the owner and that the owners of the resources are free to participate in how such resources are managed and extracted.
South South coordinator of CLO, Chinedu Uchegbu, in his presentation, observed that the local governments in Nigeria are parcelled out to political allies, making it a vehicle for compensation of political clients.