Operation of State-Local Governments Joint Account and Financial Autonomy of Local Governments in Nigeria's Fourth Republic

Abstract

Finance is essential to the Local government to enable it construct, establish and maintain social services and rural infrastructure at the grass root level, which is their statutory responsibility. The Nigerian constitution provided for funding of Local Government from three main sources: Allocation from the Federal Account, the 10% proportion of the monthly state Government internally generated revenue and the internally Generated revenue of the Local Government, yet the Local Governments continue to record setbacks towards the development of the grassroots. There have been allegations of state governments meddling with local government funds thereby undermining their financial autonomy. The study therefore examined the operations if the State-Local government Joint allocation committee and financial autonomy in Ogun State, Nigeria, one of the 36 states in the country. As in most of the other states in the federation, there was evidence of undue access and deduction from the Joint account by the state government. The state government equally utilized the opportunity of the joint account to utilize some of the funds for the account for its purposes. The membership of the committee is lopsided, such that the many observers make no contributions to the sharing of the resources which are pre-determined before the convening of such meetings. It is believed that for effective financial autonomy to be realized in the Local Governments, the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria should be amended. The state-Local government joint allocation committee should be scrapped while funds from the federation account should be sent to the local governments directly.