Governor Nasir El-Rufai’s position paper on federalism is erudite, brilliant, progressive, and actionable. Yet when it comes to federalism and decentralization between state and the local governments, it is not only too cute or too smart by half (take your pick), it reeks of hypocrisy on steroid.
While recommending total decentralization of power between Abuja and the state governors, El-Rufai proposes that a more prudent, and truly federal, option would be to let the Federation Account fund only the federal and the state governments, while the state governments should then fund and manage governance at the local level as they deem fit, and as reflected in the enabling laws that their respective Houses of Assembly shall enact to that effect. Every state can then have as many or as few local government councils as they may choose.
El Rufai wants to eat his gubernatorial cake and still have it. While he canvasses the loosening of the top-heavy stranglehold of Abuja on the states, he is not extending the same privilege to the local governments, where the state governors impose even more draconian, more autocratic, and more stifling stranglehold on their finances and administration.
Governor El-Rufai would like the governor to have their kleptomaniac fingers on the juicy honeycomb of the local government allocation to squeeze it until the Queen and worker bees are starved to death. Giving the governor the kind of monarchical power being advocated by El-Rufai will give governors, who already operate as absolute monarchies, the power of life and death at the local level.
They would have the power of the purse to punish and strangulate communities that vote for the opposition political parties. It has the potential to lead to the kind of abuse of ethnic minorities and opposition parties of the nature that characterized and eventually derailed the first republic.
Governor El-Rufai’s position on the relationship between governors and local governments runs counter to the spirit and letter of the U.S. presidential constitution, which was massively and insanely plagiarized to form the basis for the financially crippling 1999 constitution that has been foistered on our country.
Specifically, the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution grants all powers not given to the federal government back to the people by way of state and local government. Local governments have control over a plethora of services used on a daily basis by the citizens who vote for them in municipal elections. Among these functions are Police departments, fire departments
Emergency Medical Services, Libraries, Public works departments, Building and zoning departments,
Public Schools (K-12), Parks and Recreation, Municipal courts,
Streets and sanitation departments, roads and street departments, public safety, water sanitation,
Senior citizen programs,
Cemeteries, Housing,
Community development, and
Environmental protection.
Local governments fund their activities through property taxes on land, buildings, and personal dwellings, income from licenses, fees, state-operated businesses, federal grants, state grants, and lotteries.
The state governors can’t have it both ways, by demanding autonomy from the federal government while imposing their autocratic stranglehold on the local government. The local government, by its name and definition, is the level of government closest to the citizenry and is, by extension, the most appropriate arm to provide services to it.
True federalism, to be effective, must be systemic and all embracing from Abuja to the states and to the remotest local government in the federation. For Governor El-Rufai to advocate for anything less will be hypocrisy on steroids.
Dr. Alonge is the President of Africa-Diaspora for Empowerment & Development Inc.
He is based in Miami, Florida, USA.
