Against the backdrop of the celebrated judgment of the Supreme Court of Nigeria on the financial autonomy of local governments, the Adamawa state Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Ibrahim Mijinyawa, said councils in the state have been enjoying financial autonomy since 2019.
In a chat with Blueprint newspaper at the Government House, Yola, the Adamawa state capital during the week, e Mijinyawa said financial autonomy of the councils was one of the campaign promises of Governor Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri to the electorate.
Consequently, he said as soon as the governor assumed office, he directed that money must go directly to the local governments.
He said: “His Excellency, Governor Fintiri promised while campaigning in 2019 that if voted to power, he will ensure financial autonomy for the 21 local governments in the state.
The Nigeria’s apex court, the Supreme Court of Nigeria, ruled that funds allocation to local governments from the Federation Account should be paid directly to local governments instead of the previous practice of paying such allocations to the State Joint Account for Local Governments.
The court said: “Demands of justice require a progressive interpretation of the law. It is the position of this court that the federation can pay LGA allocations to the LGAs directly or pay them through the states. In this case, since paying them through states has not worked, justice of this case demands that LGA allocations from the federation account should henceforth be paid directly to the LGAs.”
By the ruling, the Supreme Court barred governors from toying with LG funds. The funds must now go to them directly. Indeed, the decision of the court has been hailed as a means to end governors’ stranglehold on local government funds.
The FAAC met Thursday in Abuja and shared a total sum of N1.298 trillion generated in September 2024 to the federal, states, and local governments.
But despite the pronouncement by the apex court, reports from FAAC and several state governments in October revealed that the monies were paid as usual into the joint accounts of the local governments as was the case before the Supreme Court judgment.
However, shortly after the judgment was delivered, the Federal Government said it had identified operational issues that needed to be sorted out before the direct payment could be done.
It thus created a three-month window for all the issues to be resolved. The three-month moratorium lapsed last week.
On this, Mijinyawa said: “Actually, as far as Adamawa state is concerned, the present administration don’t have any problem with financial autonomy for local governments because if you look at the campaign agenda of His Excellency, Hon. Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri in 2019,when he was first elected as governor, one of his agendas was to grant financial autonomy to local governments in the state. He said the money for the local governments should go directly to them unlike in other states where local government funds go directly to the Accountant General.
“Once there is FAAC meeting, you will see the money for local governments and it will come as we all know to the transmission account of the joint account and after that, it goes directly to those local governments.”
He further stated: “So, there are statutory deductions being remitted by the local governments and these statutory deductions as we all know are very transparent and there is law backing it. For example, the deduction for the university is 5 percent. There is the emirate council deductions and the Auditor General deductions which is 0.8 percent. We all see them on the table.”
The commissioner also said: “If there is anything after statutory deduction, that decision has to come from the local government chairmen themselves. For example, the model schools we are building across the 21 local governments. It is the decision by the local government chairmen to put a kind of good structures in their local governments and have same model. They decided to put it centrally and you see the deductions of those model schools on the table.
“Apart from those ones, there is salaries and statutory deductions-the remaining goes to local governments accounts. So, the ministry doesn’t temper with local government funds as far as this administration is concerned.”27