PRESS RELEASE
Afenifere has stated that President Bola Tinubu administration's push for Local Government Autonomy has a hidden agenda to use it for taxation and state capture purposes, which clouds the decision to take the right steps as suggested by Afenifere to resolve the fundamental issues affecting the non-performance of local governments.
Afenifere is cautioning the public who have fallen for various gimmicks used to provoke mass hysteria for a treatment that is always worse than the symptoms, from politically motivated anti-subsidy removal protests to corruption killing Nigeria under Jonathan to ethnic baiting in Lagos elections. This current attack on governors is a two pronged attack on democracy, the first being financial autonomy, and the second being political autonomy which must now be fiercely resisted through state assemblies for the following reasons:
1. President Tinubu's repeat of local government manipulation: Anti-people laws are usually pushed using valid reasons to bamboozle the people, one of which was Lagos State Governor Tinubu's fight for local government with the Obasanjo-led Federal Government, which ultimately led to the Lagos State government using the excuse to takeover local government tenements, levies and other income sources.
In Lagos, Tinubu appointed operators to manage waste management, markets and transport sectors, and used the operators to build and finance local political structures which in turn are utilized to capture the state for the last 25yrs, with the local governments ending up being far worse off. All successive governors have been blackmailed into submission, as ex-Governor Ambode realized when he tried to reset the waste management used to subsist Tinubu's local political apparatus.
2. Flawed foundations: the financial and political autonomy sought by Tinubu for local governments in their current form is reinforcing deceit and misgovernance. Afenifere acknowledges that local governments are currently not run properly, but the fundamental issue is that local governments should be administrative units of State governments, that should have been created by states themselves, but were created by a biased central military government that overcompensated the North with our national resources.
Military constitutions, due to their unitary and command structure, introduced the anomaly of local governments funded from the federation account, despite not being federating but administrative units. This became a basis of revenue allocation, delineation of electoral wards, census enumeration areas, employment in federal ministries and parastatals and above all, delegates to political party conventions for selecting presidential and other candidates.
When local councils/governments were not collecting federal allocations, the North had 147 while the South had 215, but once the anti-federalism act of federal allocations to local governments was put into the constitution, the North increased to 413 as against 355 for the South. In 1979, the present South East had 44, while the North West was 53, but now, the South East stands at 95 while the North West has 187. Local Government Autonomy reinforces this unfair gerrymandering and socioeconomic injustice.
Afenifere believes all local governments should be scrapped to allow states create their administrative units as they deem fit, since the responsibility of managing the state is solely that of the states. It is up to the states whether or not to divide their territories into local councils to help in delivering their state objectives, and should not be part of the national agreement of states coming together to invest part of their power in a federal government in order to act on their behalf for common state interests.
3. National deprivations: Federal government allocations to local governments are to assist the State government in their statutory duties towards the local government, so if the allocations fall short of the local government needs, it is the state that is responsible for filling the gap. Now with this development, as we have seen Governors welcome the lifting of the responsibility, local governments will be at the mercy of the federal government to fill the shortfalls, therefore will have to conform to Tinubu's known Internally Generated Revenue Drive of taxing the poor for the rich.
Tinubu's increased IGR drive is based on increased taxation drive targeting the agricultural sector that contributes about 30% of income and employment. There is already a heavy tax burden exacted by existing local government officials that extort passing food transporters, thereby increasing food prices by up to 300% from the farms to the markets. It will be excruciating for the federal government to now compound the overtaxation of the agricultural, retail and transport sectors. And like Lagos where majority of the tax comes from the poor SMEs of the informal sector, nationwide this sector will be taxed with no social benefits since the monies will be shared among the political class.
4. Localizing INECs federal imperfections: To complete the strangulating of our political economy, there are moves to push for local government political autonomy by letting INEC take over state electoral bodies. This is unacceptable until INEC is truly independent to be the unbiased arbitrator of local government elections. With its present structure, the president can select and deselect political office holders as he wishes, choosing only those that would do the bidding of the party at the center.
For INEC to be truly independent, we must either adopt the Uwais Report for retired judges and academia to be in control of INEC, even though some observers point to the recent corrupt practices of Professors in election issues. Whatever the case, INEC needs to be truly independent of the President before being allowed to handle all election issues, or we will end up as a one party state as witnessed in Lagos State.
5. State capture for 2027 and Internal colonization - the drive for financial local government autonomy is a guise for state/national capture by APC and Tinubu, especially in opposition held states. We have already witnessed even political appointees threatening elected senators with deselection. Local governments and their chairpersons would be open to electoral and financial blackmail to adopt policies already rejected by states and regions.
Although Tinubu might be using it for his normal IGR drive through increased taxation and selfish political reasons, it is a dangerous tool that could be adopted by future governments for internal colonization. Local governments could be forced to accept different civilizational practices and immigration. For example, local governments could be made to accept RUGA and cow colonies, or foreign imposed LGTBQ laws, for more or less funding and electoral success. States are supposed to be a tool of ethnic self determination and devolution of power, but the principle of representative democracy could be usurped through their local government by the central government.
Through history especially in the West Africa subregion, going back to ancient Ghana and Mali Empires, external civilizational usurpers usually back a member of the local elite to implement policies that weather down their traditional institutions and identity, which would ordinarily be rejected if proposed by them. After he leaves, the laws will be exploited for total annihilation of traditional beliefs, identity and institutions.
Afenifere and well meaning Nigerians won't stand aside while for the purpose of increasing IGR from local governments, we risk turning Nigeria into a one party or internally colonized state. Local governments don't have enough collective power to act as Federating units in Nigeria.
Signed:
Ayo Adebanjo, Leader of Afenifere
Justice Faloye, Afenifere Publicity Secretary
