A haunting political irony in Nigeria is that the government closest to the people is also the weakest. Local governments, originally designed to be agents of grassroots development, are now mere shadows of their former selves. They have been stripped of autonomy, deprived of resources, and made into political afterthoughts by the state governors who control them as personal fiefdoms.

This is not only sad, it is dangerous.

Most of the state government secretariats in Nigeria are ghost towns today. Teachers and health workers remain unpaid, roads are ungraded, boreholes are faulty, and the civic infrastructure that should underpin minimum living, such as schools, clinics, sanitation, are all in apocalyptic shambles; despite the billions sent to the same LGAs every year through the Federation Account. The big question that can be answered but will never be answered is “Where does it go?”

Consider the unconstitutional State Joint Local Government Accounts (SJLGA), a politically accepted arrangement where governors have turned LG allocations into slush funds. Who can oppose these arrangements when even the majority of local government chairmen are just errand boys who are more or less appointed not elected, powerless, instead of wielding any kind of power.

The Federal Government, in every public pronouncement on enhanced local government, has not made a move to summon the autonomy contemplated under Section 7 of the 1999 Constitution. The Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) tried to withhold LG funds from the governors in 2019, and the outcry was heard, and Abuja’s deafening silence.

What we are witnessing is not administrative ineptitude, but the slow-motion political assassination of local government. Its failure directly hastens insecurity, poverty, and youth restiveness. When citizens get no roads, health, waste management, or jobs assistance from their societies, desperation turns to violence. We’ve witnessed this script all too often across Nigeria.

It is time the citizens demanded better. Civil society must engage this issue with the urgency it deserves. Houses of assembly in the states must put an end to rubber-stamping the governor’s agenda and defend the rights of their local councils. The State Joint Local Government Accounts must be scrapped, and allocations sent directly to LGAs as the Constitution intended. Local elections should be made mandatory and conducted by an independent national body to ensure true representation. And above all, the National Assembly and Presidency must put an end to politicking around decentralization. Without financial and political autonomy, LGAs will remain powerless and pointless.

Nigeria cannot flourish when its foundation is decaying. Local governments are not a choice—they are a necessity. Abuja must move, and it must move quickly.