Those who have continued to wage war against federalism are Fulani hegemonic rulers of the north who want to preserve Nigeria as home to stateless Fulani herders across West Africa, and their Igbo rival with identical worldview, who insist everywhere in Nigeria, except their Igbo nation, is home.

For those who have faith in our country, the cheapest way forward is returning to where the rain started to beat us. Unfortunately, for close to 60 years we have done everything, including the fruitless search for unity through social engineering efforts such as NYSC, quota system of admission into tertiary institutions and civil service and, of course, Obasanjo’s confiscation of regional financial, media and educational institutions, except digging ourselves out of the hole.

Now let us return to the crisis in the local councils. “Federalist practice is that local governments are creatures and subordinates of state governments and exist at their pleasure.” (Richard Sclar) And the United Nations concept of LGAs is “a political subdivision of a nation or a state in a federal system.”

Obasanjo and his military adventurers, aping the old imperial powers, institutionalised the local government as the third tier of government in 1976. He was to later declare with remorse, “When in 1976, we brought in Local Government Reforms, it was meant to be the third tier of the Government, and not meant to be subjected to the whims and caprices of any other government.”

They ignored the fact that the states are not supposed to be appendages of the central government but coordinates, operating on the basis of a constitution which allocates power to both tiers of government.

Not much thought went into Obasanjo’s decision. Out of self- deceit, we even refused to learn from the experience of India, one of the multicultural societies where the idea of local government as third tier of government flourished since 1992 when they started operating two very distinct forms: Urban localities, covered in the 74th amendment to the Constitution, established Municipalities that derive their powers from the individual state governments; and the other where the powers of rural localities have been formalised under the panchayati raj system, under the 73rd amendment to the Constitution.

While the 1950 and the 1966 Local Administration system inherited by our military adventurers stemmed from the 1947 policy thrust of the last colonial Secretary of State, Lord Creech-Jones, which stated that “the key to resolving the problems of African administration lay in the development of an efficient and democratic local government that is close to the people,” Obasanjo’s third tier of government was built on nothing.

This was why most people believe Obasanjo’s 1966 Local Government reform was designed not for grassroots development but to share the resources of more resourceful states among less resourceful states to support what many have described as Obasanjo’s ‘fake nationalism,’ which finds expression in forcing Nigeria’s ethnic nationalities at different levels of cultural development to operate at the same level, which in itself is an aberration in federalism.

Obasanjo’s political opponents believe he was not an independent arbiter in 1976 as evidence abounds to show he was anxious to please the north that allowed him to be in power following the assassination of Murtala Mohammed.

For instance, during the 1957 constitutional review, there were 12 provinces in the north and 12 in the south (or 15 if you add Oyo, divided into two in 1934, and the two southern Cameroon provinces which later joined Cameroon after a referendum.

 Obasanjo was part of Gowon’s administration that created a 12-state structure ‘without ‘rhythm or rhyme,’ second-in-command to Murtala Mohammed that turned the country into a 19-state structure, just as he had influence on Babangida that took the states to thirty. Obasanjo is perhaps the only one who can explain why we today have 19 states for the north and 17 for the south.

Similarly, in 1979, there were 301 LGAs in the country; but in the never discussed 1999 constitution, which became operational under Obasanjo, there were 774 LGAs named, with 413 councils for the north and 355 for the south.

Obasanjo started the transfer of state residual functions to the central government by amending Decree 13 of 1970 and Decree 9 of 1971, and this was to lead to other decrees that finally increased the legislative list from 45 in 1960 to 68 in the 1999 constitution.

Those Obasanjo used to foist the American variant of federalism, with a strong centre just to promote his fake nationalism, Chief Rotimi Williams and Professor Nwabueze, regretted and apologised for shortchanging Nigerians before their death. And coming under the aegis of ‘the Patriots,’ they vigorously campaigned for the reduction of the unwieldy and unviable 36 states into six geopolitical zones.

President Tinubu, who understands our crisis of nation building, perhaps more than any of his predecessors, has started by making the six geopolitical zones economic development areas. But the ultimate goal will be to convert them to political administrative centres with the support of the National Assembly, if they are to meet the challenges of immigrant killer herdsmen, banditry, out-of-school children and ravaging poverty.

With increased revenue accruing to states and LGAs from the federation account following the fuel subsidy removal, President Tinubu is, no doubt, anxious to ensure his Renewed Hope Agenda reflects positively on the lives of the people in the rural areas. This perhaps explains why he went to secure the Supreme Court judgment to “compel the 36 states to grant full autonomy to local governments in their states, prohibits state governors from unilateral, arbitrary and unlawful dissolution of democratically elected local government leaders for local governments, and restrains the governors from spending and tampering with funds released from the federation accounts for the benefits of the LGAs when no democratically elected local government system is put in place in the states.”

Nigerians have identified with the president’s judicial victory. But I am sure he understands it was a pyrrhic victory. That was why on Jan 2, 2025, while receiving members of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) at his Ikoyi residence, he admitted the Federal Government cannot take local government away from state governments and called for stronger collaboration between the federal and state governments to address pressing challenges, including local government autonomy, agricultural productivity, and currency stability

I am sure the president remembers he took the Obasanjo government to court where he secured judgment declaring that local governments could not have financial autonomy because they are not federating units of the federation.

But in the end, the president, no doubt, understands that the issue of local governments is political. He should work through the National Assembly to see how to cede the current unviable arbitrarily created LGAs to the states who will decide what to do with them. With 68 items on the exclusive list, the federal government has more than enough to chew.

Instead of replicating state Leviathans at the local level through financial autonomy, whatever is meant for the third tier of government, which in any case belongs to the states, should be channeled through the states that are better positioned to appreciate their immediate needs.

Events in the last one year have proved that the local government is an integral part of the state; and attempting to separate them from each other will be like trying to cut off the umbilical cord of a foetus from the mother.

Finally, much as we may demonise the governors, we have no reason to believe that dysfunctional Abuja that mismanaged the nation’s resources through massive stealing in the years of abundance (1999-2015), and brought the nation to its knees between 2015 and 2023 as a result of incompetence, is the messiah the LGAs need.