Historicizing Nigeria’s Constitutional Provision for Local Autonomy and Grassroots Development in Democratic Dispensations, 1979-1999

Abstract

The paper examines the constitutional legalese in Nigerian federalism that regarding actualizing local autonomy and grassroots development. It provides a historicized account of the constitutional aphorisms for state-local government relations from Nigeria's Second Republic (1979-1983), aborted Third Republic through to the Fourth Republic (1999 to date). Its overarching aim is to examine the constitutional stipulations that encompass state-local intergovernmental relations to illumine their effects on local government autonomy and ultimately grassroots development. The researched hypothetical assumption of the paper is that the constitutional codifications for state-local government relations during the understudied constitutional regimes reflect a practice of federalism as a rigid hierarchy of authority whereby the state governments usually lord themselves over the local governments. It adopts the functional dualism model as its theoretical framework and utilizes the qualitative literature review approach for analyzing data. It finds that the constitutional language for state-local government relations in the understudied constitutions enabled the dominance and subordination of local g o v e r n m e n t s . T h e c o n s t i t u t i o n a l pronouncements caused Nigerian local governments to govern as minors or agents to their principals who are the state governments. Unfortunately, the state governments implemented the letters of the constitutional provisions for local autonomy more in breach of the spirit of the letters of those constitutions. Consequently, the principalagent model of intergovernmental relations was pervasiveness when those constitutions operated, and such a proclivity significantly weakens local autonomy and continues to undermine Nigeria's grassroots development. It recommends a constitutional review to enhance local autonomy and thereby accelerate the country's grassroots development.