Pharmacist Ahmed Baba Yahaya is the newly elected Toto local government Chairman in Nasarawa state. In this interview with TheFact Daily, he bears his mind on the recent judgement of the Supreme court, granting financial autonomy to fhs LGAs in the country. Excerpts:
What’s your take on the Local Government autonomy?
Generally, we can say that the supreme court judgement has granted the local governments financial autonomy and work is ongoing to come up with the framework on the implementation of this judgement. What is however left is the Administrative autonomy.
What does that means?
What this means is that without administrative autonomy, the local governments are still answerable to the States of Assembly. The states assembly will continue to make laws and oversight the local governments in Nigeria. So, the local governments are not fully detached from their State Houses of Assembly and by extension their State governments.
But, what can the local governments do with the financial autonomy even without the administrative autonomy?
What is not in doubt is that with financial autonomy our dispensation would definitely fare better than the past ones. This is because there will be more funds availability with the financial autonomy. Administratively too, it won’t be completely a hopeless situation, ours won’t be as hamstrung as those of the past dispensation.
With more money in your hands, surely there would be more expectations from the people, isn’t it?
That’s right. With more money and authority in our hands, we are expected to focus more on local challenges and deploying our resources to solving them. We should be seen to do better than the past dispensation. What we must have to contend with is that with the abolition of state- local government joint account, some commissions must have to cease to exist. Commissions such the local government civil service however, needs to be replicated at the local level so that some of the their functions that are very necessary would have to be taken over.
Nasarawa state, a special body was created to cater for the traditional rulers who are statutorily entitled to a percentage of your fund. What do you make of that?
The traditional rulers, with the new regime of local government administration, will have to play more roles for the peace and development of our local governments. We will have to improve their authorities and status of office to play more tangible roles in the governance of their areas of domain. I remember when our royal fathers had the real authority in the past, they were so effective in their roles so much so that they kept a tab on who came into their domains and who were their hosts. That helped a lot in curbing unwanted visitors who came with the intention of hurting our communities. But, all that changed after the enthronement of constitutional democracy stripping them of roles in democratic governance. While that might have been for a reason, it also came with attendant consequences on our socio- security wellbeing. We will look into how we can tap into their wisdom without violating the constitution.
What other use can you put the new found freedom handed by the Supreme Court to the local governments?
The importance of local government autonomy is beyond just the finance. It would be good for leadership recruitment. It is expected that young men and women would now have the chance to lead the local governments, make their mistakes at local level and learn as they climb up the leadership ladder to the state and the federal level. And at the level of the Association of Local Government of Nigeria (ALGON), we will be able to share ideas and peer review ourselves while we make progress, hopefully.
