Billions of naira are sent every month for your area — your borehole, your health centre, your refuse, your market. Somebody else has been collecting it on your behalf. This is local government autonomy, told without grammar.

Forget the budget speech on TV. Think about the pothole that swallows your tyre every rainy season. The health centre where the nurse tells you to go and buy your own gloves. The refuse heap at the junction that has been there so long it now has a name. The market stall where somebody collects levy from you every morning — cash, no receipt.

Every one of those is the job of your local government. Not the President. Not even the Governor. Nigeria’s 774 local government areas are constitutionally responsible for refuse, markets, motor parks, primary healthcare, primary school buildings, drainage, cemeteries — and the register where your child’s birth is recorded. So if all of that is their job, and they receive billions to do it: where is the money?

SO WHAT IS “LOCAL GOVERNMENT AUTONOMY”?

Remove the big grammar and it is a very small idea.

It means your council gets its own money, directly, and runs its own affairs — no middleman holding the bag. For decades it did not work that way. The Constitution created the State–Local Government Joint Account: money meant for your council was paid into an account controlled by the State, and the Governor decided how much — and when — your local government actually saw.

₦3.13 TRILLION. That is what the 774 councils received from the Federation Account in the first six months of 2026 alone, per an Agora Policy analysis of FAAC data. Six months. Now look outside your window.

Imagine your brother abroad sends ₦500,000 monthly for your school fees, but through an uncle. The uncle decides you only need ₦40,000 this month. Times are hard, be patient. He builds a house. You repeat SS2. That uncle na the Joint Account. Autonomy simply says: let the money enter the boy’s account directly.

Sit with Alimosho: over ₦10 billion in ninety days, for one council. Now picture its roads. And note that this is federal allocation alone — it excludes what your council rakes in daily from market levies, motor park tickets, shop permits and the agbero at the junction. That money is also, legally, local government revenue.

THREE LOCKS ON ONE DOOR

Why nothing changes, even when everybody knows.

One: the money never reaches. A governor could sit on council funds, deduct whatever he called a deduction, and hand over the remainder — often barely enough for salaries, nothing to build with.

Two: you never really chose your chairman. Local elections are not run by INEC but by state commissions funded and appointed by the very governor whose party is contesting. The Carnegie Endowment counted 202 local elections between 1998 and 2022: 142 of them — seven in every ten — were clean sweeps where the ruling party won every single chairmanship seat. In a country where we argue about jollof for three days, one party wins 100% of seats in a whole state. Who we dey deceive?

Three: sometimes they skip the election entirely. Governors have dissolved elected councils and installed “caretaker committees” of handpicked loyalists. Before the 2024 Supreme Court ruling, 462 local governments across 22 states were run this way, according to International IDEA — over half the councils in Nigeria, run by people you never voted for.

THEN THE SUPREME COURT SAID “ENOUGH”

11 July 2024. Write the date down.

The Federal Government took all 36 governors to court, and a seven-member panel ruled unanimously: allocations must be paid directly to local governments. Withholding council funds through the Joint Account was condemned outright. Caretaker committees were declared illegal — and the court held that a democratically elected local government is sacrosanct and non-negotiable, with caretaker-run councils entitled to no federal allocation at all. The country cheered. It was historic.

TWO YEARS LATER: NOTHING MUCH. The judgment remains largely on paper. Money still routes through state accounts across most of the country. NULGE, the local government workers’ union, has accused federal agencies of dragging their feet, saying no real administrative framework was ever put in place. At one point Delta was reported as the only state whose councils had opened the required accounts.

Why? A judgment is paper until somebody enforces it. The CBN set out procedures for councils to open dedicated accounts — but the chairman who must insist on his own independence is usually the same man the governor installed. You no fit bite the hand wey put you for chair.

WAIT — MAKE WE TALK TRUE

Anybody selling autonomy as magic is selling you something.

Autonomy is not integrity. Money that reaches a council directly can be stolen directly. Instead of 36 gatekeepers we may create 774 small emperors, each with billions and far less press scrutiny than a governor attracts. Capacity is thin. Many councils have weak accounting and no functioning internal audit. Pouring billions into a leaking bucket is not development. The law is not one-sided. Justice Abiru dissented, arguing Section 162 is clear as written and the proper fix is a constitutional amendment, not judicial reinterpretation. Others warn that federal money going straight to councils pulls power toward Abuja and weakens the states. So the honest position is not “autonomy will save us”. It is autonomy plus real elections plus open books. Remove one leg and the stool falls.

WETIN YOU FIT ACTUALLY DO

You cannot walk into Aso Rock. But you can reach the LG secretariat by keke — and proximity is power.

1. Learn your chairman’s name. Most Nigerians can name the President and the Governor, but have no idea who runs the council spending billions on their street. You cannot hold a stranger accountable.
2. Check the numbers yourself. FAAC allocations per council are published monthly by the Accountant-General and reported by the NBS. Find your LGA’s figure, screenshot it, put it beside a photo of your road.
3. Show up for the boring meeting. Councils are meant to hold budget and town-hall sessions. Almost nobody attends — which is exactly why they are comfortable.
4. Take local elections seriously. Low turnout makes rigging cheap. There is a live national argument over whether INEC should run council polls instead of state commissions. It needs ordinary voices, not just lawyers.
5. Push for the constitutional amendment. The court did what a court can. Sections 7, 162 and 197 belong to the National Assembly and the state assemblies — and your assembly member has a constituency office.

NOW TELL US. What has your local government actually built in your area this past year? Name the LGA. Name the project — or name the pothole. If enough of us post ours, we will have built something this country has never had: a receipt.

Sources: FAAC communiqués (Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation); Agora Policy analysis of FAAC data, H1 2026; National Bureau of Statistics; Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; International IDEA; reporting by The Guardian Nigeria, The Cable, SBM Intelligence and ThisDay, 2024–2026.