LOCAL GOVERNMENT AUTONOMY IN NIGERIA'S FEDERAL SYSTEM: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE 1999 CONSTITUTION (AS AMENDED)

Abstract

This paper critically analyses local government autonomy within Nigeria's federal system, with particular focus on the structural contradictions embedded in the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, as amended through the Fifth Alteration (2023). Drawing on fiscal federalism theory and democratic decentralisation theory the paper develops an empirical analysis of five principal mechanisms through which constitutional guarantees of local government autonomy are structurally subverted in practice: the State Joint Local Government Account (SJLGA) fiscal interception system; the State Independent Electoral Commission (SIEC) architecture of electoral capture; the proliferation of unconstitutional caretaker committees; state civil service control over local government personnel; and functional encroachment on Fourth Schedule responsibilities. Empirical findings, presented through a multi-dimensional autonomy scoring framework, demonstrate that across all five dimensions Nigeria's local governments score consistently below 35 out of 100 a convergent index of structural subordination persisting despite the formal robustness of constitutional guarantees. The paper evaluates the 2024 Supreme Court ruling in Attorney General of the Federation v. Attorney General of Abia State and 35 Others as a landmark but dimensionally partial judicial intervention, and develops a five-point policy agenda whose design logic is derived directly from the identified subversion mechanisms. The paper concludes that sustainable local government autonomy requires not merely textual constitutional revision but the systematic dismantling of structural subversion mechanisms and transformation of the political economy incentives that make local government subordination rational for state governors.