An Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of Ibadan, Bayo Adekanye, has described the Supreme Court judgment affirming local government autonomy as the Tinubu-led administration’s most revolutionary achievement.
Adekanye stated this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Ibadan on Friday.
He said that with the development, people at the grassroots can now have direct access to the resources from the central distributable pool rather than through the states.
“With their access to resources due to them, the grassroots can then begin to make use of what has long been their entitlements in order to attend to issues relating to the basic needs of the people at the grassroots."
The development, he also said, would put paid to local government functionaries going to state capitals to share the resources belonging to the people at the grassroots.
The emeritus professor expressed the hope that the underlying purposes and intent of the judgment would be well-implemented.
“If well-implemented, it will not only mark the first and boldest step toward decentralising the structure of politics and governance in the country but also the beginning of genuine development at the grassroots,” he said.
The don, however, said that the issue of accountability and the use to which the resources would be put should be known and decided at the local level.
“I’m sure our people are ready to deal with whichever groups of individuals, including politicians, may want to pocket the money meant for the people at the local level,” he said.
Adekanye also stated that the judgment had constituted a de facto amendment by the National Assembly of the extant provisions of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) on the joint state and local government account.
According to him, those provisions have now been laid to rest by the judgment.
“The landmark achievement is genuinely the decentralisation of the government and politics of Nigeria.
“We least expected it from that end. All along, we have been focusing on the creation of more states and more state bureaucracies as a strategy for bringing development closer to the people.
“Tinubu’s administration has, however, done us proud with this solution,” Adekanye said.