The Nigerian Quandary: Governors Still Pocketing LGA Funds One Year After Supreme Court Ruling
How State Governors Are Bleeding the Local Government System Dry and Making Stooges of Councillors, House of assembly members and LGA Chairmen
By Oblong Media Investigative Desk
http://www.oblongmedia.net
One year after the Supreme Court of Nigeria ruled that local government allocations must be paid directly to elected councils, not funneled through state governments, the practice has continued with impunity. The judgment, hailed at the time as a watershed moment in Nigeria’s democratic development, lies in a coma, unimplemented, disregarded, and mocked by the very institutions tasked with upholding it.
It is perhaps only in Nigeria that a Supreme Court ruling is treated like a polite suggestion rather than the binding law of the land.
Today, the 774 local government areas (LGAs) in Nigeria remain strangled by state governors who continue to pocket and mismanage funds constitutionally meant for grassroots development. The Joint Account Allocation Committee (JAAC), which was supposed to be a transparent clearing house, has become a dark chamber of pillage, where state governors siphon billions under the guise of “oversight” and “joint projects.” In reality, it’s nothing more than a legalized heist cloaked in federalism.
The result is catastrophic.
Health centers rot. Rural roads are impassable. Schools have become ghost houses of chalk and dust. Agricultural extension services are extinct. Yet, monthly allocations flow uninterrupted from Abuja, only to be intercepted and rerouted by state governments for pet projects, political patronage, and luxury convoys.
The Grand Scam of Local Democracy
State governors have effectively reduced the third tier of government to an empty shell. LGA chairmen, who are constitutionally elected to manage local affairs, are treated like errand boys, groveling before their state masters for crumbs. Most state assemblies are in on the scheme, rubber-stamping illegal caretaker committees or budgetary line items that serve only to institutionalize this daylight robbery.
Councillors, who should be the watchdogs of grassroots governance, are glorified cheerleaders, paid off to chant praises and defend their captors. Many can’t even tell you what oversight means. Their job, it seems, is to clap, endorse, and obey. In some states, governors handpick LGA chairmen and councillors in sham “elections” that are nothing more than coronations of loyalists. There is no accountability, no transparency, no democracy, just a puppet show with the governor holding every string.
The Price of Profligacy
The implications are dire. Nigeria’s local governments are supposed to be the closest to the people, responsible for primary education, sanitation, local roads, markets, and social welfare. Yet, with their funds hijacked, they are reduced to beggars with titles. This betrayal is one of the greatest causes of Nigeria’s underdevelopment.
You cannot build a nation from the top down. Without empowered local governments, you have a country without a foundation, an edifice resting on air. That is why youth unemployment festers, crime surges, and infrastructure crumbles. It is why boreholes are celebrated like rocket launches and why teachers in village schools haven’t seen salaries in months.
And yet, governors continue to live like emperors, chartering private jets, acquiring estates abroad, and donating public funds to political causes while their LGAs wallow in penury.
When Will Nigerians Rise?
This is the crux of Nigeria’s democratic dysfunction. The centralization of power at the state level has created monsters, unchecked, unaccountable and insatiable. The federal government is aware. The National Assembly is silent. The judiciary, after speaking once through the Supreme Court, now watches helplessly as its ruling is trampled under foot.
The Nigerian people must demand better. Until we break this vicious cycle and enforce fiscal independence for LGAs, development will remain a myth, and democracy will be nothing but a tragic illusion.
Governors must be called out, publicly shamed, and legally restrained from further looting of local government funds. Chairmen and councillors must find the courage to resist or resign. Civil society must rise. The media must expose. And Nigerians must demand that the Supreme Court ruling be implemented, not in principle, but in practice.
Enough is enough. The theft of grassroots governance must end.
© Oblong Media Unlimited.
For press inquiries or republishing rights, contact: Chimazuru65@gmail.com
OBLONG MEDIA UNLIMITED 
Leave a comment