SPECIAL REPORT: S’Court Granted Autonomy, But Governors Still Control LGs 2 Years After
By Tahir Ahmad,
For many Nigerians, local governments exist only on paper. Their names appear on signboards, election posters and official documents, but their presence is rarely felt in daily life. The roads remain broken, refuse continues to pile up in communities, markets abandoned, primary healthcare centres are abandoned and rural infrastructure keeps collapsing despite billions of naira allocated monthly to the 774 local government councils across the country.
This disconnect has become one of the biggest paradoxes in Nigeria’s governance system. Local governments were created to be the closest tier of government to the people, the first responders to community problems and the engines of grassroots development. Yet, in many parts of the country, citizens cannot point to a single meaningful project executed by their councils in years.
Ironically, this crisis persists at a time when local governments are receiving more attention, more funding and more constitutional backing than ever before. The landmark Supreme Court judgment granting financial autonomy to councils, alongside President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s push for direct allocation of funds, was expected to usher in a new era of grassroots development. Instead, many Nigerians are still waiting to see the impact beyond political headlines and courtroom victories.
This contradiction sits at the heart of Nigeria’s governance crisis. The country has 774 local government areas, collectively receiving billions of naira monthly from the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC), but the average citizen still encounters broken drainage systems, overflowing refuse dumps, abandoned health centres, unmotorable rural roads and non-functional public schools. The obvious question remains: where does the money go?
The debate over local government autonomy has therefore become one of the most important governance conversations in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic. Under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration, the issue reached a historic turning point after the Supreme Court’s landmark judgment of July 11, 2024, which granted financial autonomy to the 774 local government councils and declared the long-standing practice of state governments controlling council funds unconstitutional.
The ruling was celebrated nationwide because it addressed one of the deepest structural problems in Nigeria’s governance architecture which is the State-Local Government Joint Account system. For years, governors exercised overwhelming control over local government finances, often determining how allocations were spent or withheld. In many states, councils existed largely as administrative outposts of governors rather than independent institutions capable of responding to local needs.
The Supreme Court ruling was supposed to change that. The Tinubu administration moved quickly to enforce direct funding mechanisms and pressure states to conduct local government elections, especially after the court ruled that caretaker committees were unconstitutional and unelected officials could not validly receive federal allocations.
In principle, this represented one of the boldest federal interventions in grassroots governance since 1999. But in practice, the transition from legal victory to real development has remained painfully slow.
The central problem is that autonomy on paper does not automatically translate into autonomy in reality. Several governors adapted quickly to the new political environment. Rather than openly resisting the ruling, many states organised hurried local government elections where ruling parties swept virtually all seats. Observers argue that this simply replaced direct state control with indirect political loyalty. Chairmen may now receive allocations directly, but in many cases, they remain politically dependent on governors who influenced their emergence.
This has created what many observers describe as “administrative autonomy without political independence.” Local government chairmen who owe their positions to governors are unlikely to challenge the same political structures that previously controlled council finances.
The funding situation itself also reveals a troubling paradox. On paper, local governments are receiving more money than ever before. The removal of fuel subsidy and exchange rate reforms significantly increased distributable national revenue. Yet visible development at the grassroots remains scarce.
Part of the explanation lies in institutional decay accumulated over decades. Many councils lacked basic financial systems required for independent operation. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) reportedly required councils to present audited financial statements before accessing direct allocations, but numerous local governments had not maintained proper audited accounts for years. The result was that several states continued acting as intermediaries because many councils were administratively unprepared for financial independence.
This exposes a painful truth about Nigeria’s local governance system: many councils have been deliberately weakened over time. Instead of building strong local institutions, Nigeria created a culture where councils simply waited for monthly allocations from Abuja. Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) remains extremely weak across most local governments. Outside a few urban councils in Lagos, Rivers, Kano and Abuja, many local governments cannot independently finance meaningful projects.
Consequently, once salaries, political appointments and overhead costs are deducted, little remains for capital development. In some councils, personnel costs consume almost the entire monthly allocation. Ghost workers, inflated payrolls and bloated bureaucracies further worsen the situation.
This is why citizens rarely feel the impact of local government administration despite increasing allocations. The money often disappears into consumption rather than development.
The consequences are most visible in waste management and primary healthcare, two sectors directly tied to local government performance.
Across many Nigerian cities and rural communities, waste disposal systems remain chaotic. Refuse piles line roadsides, drainage channels are clogged with plastic waste and environmental sanitation efforts are largely reactive instead of preventive. Local governments, which should coordinate community sanitation and waste collection systems, often lack operational vehicles, environmental officers or modern waste infrastructure.
In Lagos, Abuja and a few other urban centres, state governments have increasingly taken over waste management responsibilities because councils have proven ineffective. Yet this centralisation also weakens the original constitutional vision of local governments managing community-level environmental health challenges.
Primary healthcare tells an even more troubling story. Nigeria’s primary healthcare centres should serve as the first point of medical contact for millions of citizens, especially in rural areas. Instead, many facilities operate without doctors, essential drugs, electricity or functional equipment. Some exist only as empty buildings.
This collapse has severe national consequences. When primary healthcare systems fail, citizens flood secondary and tertiary hospitals for minor illnesses, worsening pressure on already overstretched facilities. Maternal mortality, infant mortality and preventable disease outbreaks become harder to control because local health systems are weak.
Ironically, local governments were originally designed to prevent exactly this kind of governance failure. Their proximity to communities was meant to ensure quicker response to local problems. But proximity without accountability has achieved little.
Another major issue is the absence of transparency. Most Nigerians do not know how much their local governments receive monthly or how those funds are spent. Council budgets are rarely publicised in accessible formats. Procurement processes are opaque. Legislative oversight at the local level is weak or compromised. Without transparency, autonomy can simply decentralise corruption rather than development.
The Tinubu administration deserves credit for confronting a politically sensitive issue that previous governments avoided. Taking governors to court over local government autonomy was not a small decision. The Supreme Court judgment has at least reopened national debate about grassroots governance and constitutional federalism. However, genuine reform cannot stop at direct allocation.
Nigeria needs a deeper restructuring of local governance institutions. First, local government elections must become truly competitive and credible. As long as governors maintain overwhelming influence over State Independent Electoral Commissions (SIECs), councils will remain politically captured. Electoral reforms should move local government elections closer to genuinely independent oversight mechanisms.
Second, transparency must become mandatory. Every local government should publicly disclose monthly FAAC receipts, budgets, contract awards and project implementation reports. Citizens cannot demand accountability from institutions operating in secrecy.
Furthermore, councils need professional administrative capacity. Financial management systems, independent auditing structures and qualified civil servants are essential if autonomy is to produce results. Many local governments currently lack the technical expertise required for effective governance.
In addition, local governments must expand their economic base beyond federal allocations. Agricultural markets, local taxation systems, land administration, small business permits and community partnerships can improve IGR if properly managed. Dependence on monthly federal transfers has created institutional laziness.
Moreover, citizens themselves must become more involved in local governance. Nigerians often focus heavily on presidential and gubernatorial politics while ignoring council administration. Yet the condition of local roads, markets, drainage systems and primary health centres depends largely on grassroots governance. Public pressure, civic engagement and community monitoring are necessary to force accountability.
Ultimately, the crisis of local government in Nigeria is not merely about funding. It is about political culture, institutional weakness and the absence of accountability.
The Supreme Court judgment and Tinubu administration’s enforcement efforts may have created a historic opening, but autonomy alone cannot repair decades of dysfunction overnight. Without transparency, credible elections, institutional reform and citizen participation, local governments may continue receiving larger allocations while ordinary Nigerians continue asking the same painful question: where is the impact?
Tahir Ahmad is a journalist and author of the publication Anti-Drug, Anti-Smuggling Campaigns: A Corpers’ Chronicle. He writes from Abuja and can be reached via: [email protected]