Tightening Control: Governors Implement New Strategies to Manage Local Governments

Despite their crucial role in grassroots progress and development, local governments in the country have often been regarded as personal fiefdoms by governors, who demonstrate little respect for this level of governance. In this report, DIRISU YAKUBU analyzes the recent conduct of council elections and the potential dangers that may arise if governors are not urged to relinquish their control.

Virtually everyone agrees that governance at the grassroots level is critical to the authoritative allocation of values in any civilised society. Given its proximity to the people, scholars and stakeholders of local government administration have been consistent in their advocacy for autonomy for the third tier of government.

Since the return to the democratic mode of governance in 1999, Nigerian governors have practically demonstrated little or no official eagerness to allow democracy to play out at the grassroots level. With the possible exception of a few, Nigerian governors see and treat Local Government Areas as personal fiefdoms

Without a doubt, the nation’s extant law is partly to blame for this. While vesting the powers to conduct presidential, National Assembly and governorship elections on the Independent National Electoral Commission; the constitution does not accord local government council the status of a tier of government; leaving elections into chairmanship and councillorship seats to the selfish machinations of these all-powerful governors.

Often taking advantage of the poverty in rural settings, state governors hardly implement genuine empowerment programmes at the grassroots; a development that has continued to fuel rural-urban migration for decades. Where elections are held at all, they handpick their loyalists, many of whom helped mobilise support for them during electioneering campaigns.

Consequently, even unpopular governors have found a way to keep their political parties relevant at the local government level at all cost, regardless of their own popularity or record of performance.

Arguably, nowhere has this been recently demonstrated than in Edo State, the famed heartbeat of the nation where the outgoing Governor Godwin Obaseki whose Peoples Democratic Party made a clean sweep of all 18 chairmanship seats in the September 3, 2023 council poll.