Political Economy Essentialness of Local Autonomy for Nigeria’s Optimal Development Beyond COVID-19 Sacrosanctity of the Bottom-up Approach

Abstract

In this paper, I hypothesize that true, optimum, all-inclusive and comprehensive development cannot materialize in Nigeria, and also in the aftermath of COVID-19, without functional local autonomy in place. The kind of local autonomy envisaged and preferred is whereby local government authority enjoys unencumbered financial, functional, political and administrative self-determination to deliver its developmental mandates. Deriving from a critical theory valuation of the bottom-up stratagem to development, I argue that underdevelopment persists in Nigeria mainly because the local governments are denied self-government in these policy domains amongst others: a) superintend their fiscal affairs; b) determine the trajectory of grassroots democracy; c) delineate the best possible administrative structure, strategy and arrangement to actualize chiefly local economy and socio-political advancement programmes; and d) carry out constitutionally allotted functions of truly a local nature that generate worthwhile monetary earnings. Based on the aforesaid, I construct an abstract politico-constitutional model coined “model for guaranteeing local autonomy in the Nigerian federalism”. The paper holds the belief that concretization of the constructed model in the realpolitik of Nigeria will prompt accelerated ripple effects on the course of advancing ideal development in the country. It notes that underdevelopment will linger and further deepen in Nigeria if denial of local government autonomy in the intergovernmental relations developmental schemes - which negates their third-tier status - keeps on. It concludes that the unrelenting dominance of local government affairs in Nigeria, especially by the state governments, will make the all-encompassing development of the country a pipe dream.