Autonomy with Strings Attached

A short clip is circulating on Nigerian social media. A woman in Anambra says she only found out this year that her Local Government chairman receives about ₦740 million a month from Abuja. The outrage writes itself. What is he doing with three-quarters of a billion naira every month?

The replies split two ways. One user insisted that ₦30 million would clear the salaries of most Local Governments in Nigeria, so the rest must be going somewhere. Another answered that salaries, pensions and statutory obligations come first, and “with all these the money has finished.”

Both replies miss the point. The ₦740 million is roughly right: in July 2026, Awka South received ₦760.6 million and Anaocha ₦864.5 million. The ₦30 million is badly wrong: in 2023, Delta’s 25 Local Governments spent about ₦3.74 billion a month on salaries alone. But the real question is not just how much arrives, or even how much salaries take. It is who decides what happens to the money once it lands, and what the money prioritizes because after all is said and done, the true measure of governance and government spending is how much it improves the lives of citizens.

The Supreme Court tried to settle who decides what happens to the money in July 2024. This first part in the two-part series on LG Autonomy looks at what the court ordered, where the money actually goes, and what Local Governments have become while the order waits. Part 2 asks the harder question: even if every naira were paid directly, could Local Governments raise and manage their own money?

On 11 July 2024, the Supreme Court ordered that Federation Account allocations be paid directly to democratically elected Local Governments. It held that states cannot hold or spend those funds, and that caretaker committees are unconstitutional. Twenty-seven months on, the order is largely unenforced.

The delay has had many causes. More than 30 states rushed through Local Government elections, which the ruling party mostly swept. FAAC said in early 2025 that only Delta’s 25 local governments met the account requirements. The CBN reportedly asked for two years of audited accounts before opening accounts for direct payment. Chairmen in several states said their governors warned them against opening those accounts.

The money kept flowing through the old pipes. Governors received about ₦4.5 trillion meant for Local Governments in the first year. A Guardian survey report in January 2026 found no verified case of any Local Government receiving its allocation directly from FAAC. In the first quarter of 2026, states again received the ₦1.46 trillion allocated to Local Governments. Under the new VAT formula in force since January 2026, Local Governments still take 35 per cent, about ₦1.51 trillion in the first half of the year.

In Imo, allocations reportedly go to the governor, who releases salaries and running costs. Enugu, Kwara, Cross River, Ondo, Ogun, Ekiti and Lagos still run JAAC, though some say they do not interfere. Osun remains caught in its dispute with the Federal Government.

The politics has hardened. In September 2026, the Governors’ Forum said disbursement was a federal matter, and NULGE said the same thing in reverse. An opposition presidential candidate accused the Presidency of leaving the funds with governors ahead of 2027. Governorship candidates are now promising autonomy from their swearing-in day. The danger is that a 2024 Supreme Court ruling is now a campaign promise for 2027; something is fundamentally wrong with that system, and sadly, citizens bear the brunt of it. When a court order becomes a campaign promise, it simply means the court order has not been obeyed. We can discuss why those who took the oath to abide by the Constitution don't obey a court order later, over a virtual coffee; let's get back on track; I am digressing.

Before the money surged, salaries took most of it. In 2023, the wage bill alone took about 59 per cent of everything Delta’s 25 Local Governments received from FAAC:

Two things stand out. First, most Local Government staff are not in the secretariat at all. Nearly six in ten, 14,789 of 25,059, work for the Education Authorities: they are primary school teachers and education workers. When people ask what a Local Government does with its money, a large part of the answer is standing in front of a primary school class.

Second, salaries are only the first charge. Pensions, traditional council stipends, statutory deductions and running costs come out of the remaining 41 per cent before a single culvert is built. The capital budget is whatever survives that queue.

In fairness, the queue has eased since 2023. FAAC allocations to Local Governments nearly doubled after fuel subsidy removal and exchange rate unification: ₦7.43 trillion went to the 774 between July 2024 and December 2025, against about ₦2.6 trillion for all of 2023. In the first half of 2026 alone, Local Governments were allocated ₦3.04 trillion.

OurLgaMoni, a civic tracker of FAAC data, puts July 2026 statutory allocations between ₦497.7 million for Ifedayo in Osun and ₦3.56 billion for Alimosho in Lagos. In Anambra, Awka South received ₦760.6 million that month and Anaocha ₦864.5 million. The ₦740 million in the clip is about right.

Set those receipts against Delta’s 2023 wage bill and the squeeze looks different today. Ughelli North received ₦1.01 billion in July 2026; its 2023 wage bill was about ₦224 million a month. Patani received ₦669.8 million against about ₦107 million. Salaries have risen since the July 2024 minimum wage, and July was a strong month, but even a doubled wage bill would leave most of the allocation standing.

So the honest point is not that salaries swallow everything. It is that almost every naira still comes from outside, the state decides what is deducted before it lands, and nobody publishes what is left. A bigger allocation in someone else’s custody is still someone else’s decision.

Put the judgment, the money and the deductions together, and the honest description is this. Too many Nigerian Local Governments have become accounts of the state, with an elected face.

They are netted accounts. What a Local Government can spend is decided after the state has taken its deductions at JAAC, for charges the Local Government neither set nor voted for.

They are conduits. Money arrives from Abuja through the state, is netted at JAAC, and leaves again on terms set elsewhere. Little of it is decided locally.

They are political outposts. Elections run by state-funded commissions produce chairmen loyal to governors. Answering upwards is safer than answering to residents.

And they are invisible. Few publish budgets, fewer publish budget performance, and almost none tell citizens what was deducted before the money arrived. That is why a ₦740 million figure can go viral with no context, and why a ₦30 million guess can sound plausible.

They are tax collectors without a tax base. They hold revenue powers on paper and little capacity to use them. That is the subject of Part 2.

None of this means Local Government has stopped mattering. Primary schools, primary health centres, markets and rural roads still sit in its column. It means the tier responsible for them has been hollowed out, one reform at a time.

Most of what needs doing does not wait for a constitutional amendment. It needs a specific actor, using a tool that already exists. Part 2 deals with building Local Governments’ own revenue. Here is what each actor can do now about the money and who controls it.

1. Form a Local Government accountability coalition in every Local Government Area. Bring traders’ and transport unions, NULGE, women’s and youth groups, faith and traditional leaders, local media and willing officials to one table. Build on structures that already exist, such as the Ward Development Committees in primary health care and the School-Based Management Committees in primary schools. The coalition agrees on five services to track, meets monthly, and hosts a quarterly town hall where the chairman presents what came in and what went out. It does not need a budget line from anyone to begin.

2. Measure at the ward and the household, not the state. Nigeria has 8,809 electoral wards. A short quarterly household check in each ward asks plain questions. Was the health centre open? Did it have drugs? Did the teacher come? Published ward by ward, the answers show what a Local Government delivers rather than what it claims.

3. Put the gross and the net side by side. Monthly allocations per Local Government are already public through FAAC data and civic trackers. What is missing is what the state deducted. Coalitions can request the JAAC schedule under the Freedom of Information Act and publish both numbers together. A gap nobody explains is a story.

4. Pay directly where the conditions are met, and publish the list. Delta’s 25 Local Governments met the account requirements in January 2025. Begin there and add states as they comply. Every month, publish which Local Governments were paid directly and which still went through JAAC. Resistance is easier when it is invisible.

5. Make the deductions public. RMAFC already monitors federation revenue. It should require each state’s monthly JAAC schedule, showing every deduction by Local Government and by recipient, and publish it beside the FAAC figures.

6. Pay the Section 162(7) share by formula. The Constitution already requires states to pay Local Governments a share of their own revenue. A short state law can fix the percentage, the date it is paid, and where it is published.

7. Publish, and pick one service. Post the approved budget and monthly receipts on the secretariat notice board, a website and community WhatsApp groups. Then pick one service the Local Government owns outright, such as primary health care, and make its improvement visible within a year.

8. Cut the strings in law. Amend Section 7 to limit what state assemblies can impose on Local Government finance. Remove the joint account in Section 162(6) and state control in 162(8). Move Local Government elections to INEC, or give state electoral commissions first-line funding and secure tenure. The current constitution review, ahead of 2027, is the window.

The first three need no one’s permission. The next four need political will, not new law. Only the last needs the Constitution.

For fifty years, Nigeria has argued about how money should reach its Local Governments. It has hardly argued about who decides what happens to it after it lands. The result is a tier that receives more than ever, ₦3.04 trillion in the first half of 2026 alone, and controls far less of it than the Constitution intends.

The comedian Ikechukwu Smith has built a whole series, Nigeria Is Not a Real Place, on one running joke. Nigerians speak something, he insists, but it may not be English. Anyone who has been told to “come and be going” knows what he means. The words are English. The meaning is something else.

Local Government autonomy works the same way. The Constitution says it, the Supreme Court has said it, and every governor says it. What we practise has the vocabulary of autonomy and none of its grammar. Some Local Governments do not even seem to want it: chairmen who would not open accounts for direct payment, and chairmen who signed their revenue over to the state while calling it “an honour to serve” under the governor.

What we have also has a name, and it is not autonomy. It is custody. A Local Government in custody can be fed and kept alive, but it cannot decide much that matters. Custody can even be signed for. In Enugu, all 17 chairmen reportedly gave the state Board of Internal Revenue a power of attorney over their own revenue.

The Supreme Court has done its part. The rest is ordinary, unglamorous work: registers, valuers, published ledgers, audited accounts and elections that answer to residents. As 2027 approaches and autonomy is promised again from every podium, the test for each candidate is simple. Will you let the money, and the power to raise it, reach the tier the Constitution assigned it to? Everything else is strings.

Tomorrow, in Part 2: Tax Collectors Without a Tax Base. Even if every naira were paid directly, could Local Governments raise and manage money of their own?

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