Persisting Discourse on Federalism and Local Government Autonomy in Nigeria
Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: Federalism which is usually precipitated by diversity of the peoples that makeup a country as well as size is essentially about the division of a nation between and among the tiers of government in the performance of government functions. Key in any federal system is the arrangement on how the revenue of the state will be shared among the component parts. The politics of revenue allocation and resource control have been a ding-dung affair for a very long time in Nigeria. This is seen in varying agitations by different peoples of Nigeria as well as the number of various commissions and committees that have been setup to handle revenue matters since the colonial days. Local governments are essentially set up to effect delivery of basic social services to the grassroots among the geo-political entities. These services are articulated in the local government reforms of 1976 and listed in the Fourth Schedule of both 1979 and 1999 Nigerian Constitution. Unfortunately, it seemed that provisions of routine reforms (the revenue allocation formula, for example) and, especially, states’ practice with regards to relationship with the local governments over the years, have tended to substantially relegate local governments to the background. This is accentuated even in the current revenue sharing formula which gives federal government 52.68%, leaving states and local governments with 26.72 and 20.60% respectively. At some point, the position of the Local Government was even being contested as a federating unit. To critically analyze the subject, this paper made use of basically secondary data. The study recommends amongst others that in order to strike a balance among the actors in the Nigerian fiscal sphere, there is need to reorganize the constitution to incorporate local governments into the federating units.
Institution: Adeleke University
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W3114530995