One of the functions of foundations is to keep alive the memories of the people whose personalities and professional achievements the foundation was established in honour of. They are, therefore, immortality projects that allow for post-mortem influence in ensuring that their ideas, ideals and legacies continue to resonate after they depart from this plane. This is all the more so if the personality in question is associated with the search for fundamental resolutions of the problems of human existence and social harmony. This is what situates the Binuyo Foundation among the annals of significant foundations worldwide. And the Foundation is the patriotic brainchild of Chief Adebimpe Lala and the late Deaconness Patience Mogbadunola Lala. From its inception in 2014 to date, it has initiated an archive of fundamental discourses that range from surveying and sustainable development to cross-border relations, constitutional reform, the economic (dis)order in Nigeria, and the quality of life. I hope this honour of delivering the ninth foundation lecture will not only add an important value to the foundation’s vision and mission but also instigate deeper reflection around our unique patrimony as Nigerians in our collective search for national transformation that enables Nigeria’s democratic governance to work for everyone.
Why the choice of the subject matter of local governance—and the need for its revitalisation and strengthening—for this lecture? Let me commence by reiterating the significance of my fascination with local governance as a very critical plank in the consolidation of Nigeria’s democratic governance. Democracy, for me, is fundamentally grassroots-oriented. In other words, the beginning of democratic government all across the world is invested in the participation of the people. And the idea of the people is usually located within the rural cum community context that speaks to the grassroots—the space where millions of citizens continuously attempt to make sense of the government policies and their own lives within the context of these policies and associated programs. This means that to make democratic governance meaningful, it has to be within the grassroots, where democracy can be more democratic, and where governance can yield the best dividends.
I came to this understanding of democracy within my passionate advocacy for administrative reform of the public service as the institutional and structural means by which the government of Nigeria can deploy its administrative arsenal to better the lives of Nigerians. The public service complements the significance of democratic governance. It is through the public service that the dividends of democratic governance are delivered as effectively and efficiently as possible to the citizens. But then, the institutional reform of the public service will make no productive and democratic sense if service delivery is not enabled at the grassroots level where millions of Nigerians live.
My abiding interest in local governance stemmed from growing up as a young lad in Okeho and Aáwé within a communal framework heavily structured around moral and communal values that derived from parental and communal upbringing. This was a period when societal harmony and values were shaped by what the late Ali Mazrui called Africa’s triple heritage, defined by the peaceful coexistence of the Christian-Western tradition, Islamic influence and African traditional culture. This made for a socially secure and cohesive unit where key values, from an acute respect for elders to a deep and diligent care for the upbringing and moral uprightness of children, were paramount for community identity, development and progress. It was a generation that was constantly exhorted to remember the child and from where they came from (Rántí omo eni tí ìwo ńse). These same communal values were called upon in organising communal projects, like the community schools, that enabled the communities to make sense of their own aspirations and development progress. This experience enables us to understand how local communities were essentially the bastion of significant values that are meant not only to mould individual character in line with the communal expectations but also serve as agent-moulding frames by which individuals and communities engage with regional and national issues. This is the essence of Peter Ekeh’s two-public thesis, and the argument that the primordial public preserves the moral authority over the people’s lives that the civic public has so far failed to achieve.
In the immediate post-independence period, the local government areas were significant spaces both for sociopolitical mobilisation as well as efficient public works, service provision and delivery. With the 1966 coup and the political events that followed, military rule totally transformed the political landscape of the Nigerian state and its constitutional order, especially through the introduction of the new federalism and the centralised system of governance that disrupted and undermined the place of local governance not only in Nigeria’s federal framework but also in its democratic aspiration. The cumulative effects have been devastating. One, we can talk of the Land Use Act of 1976 that constitutionally vested the ownership of lands in the hands of the states, and hence crucially disconnected communities from their means of sustenance. Two, urbanisation instigated the massive flight away from rural to urban spaces, significantly undermining the kinship thread that was the traditional bonding and ultimately inaugurated a key depth of social anomie and lawlessness that undermined communal bonds.
Three, urbanisation was complemented by a further erosion of communal values through the infiltration of Western cultural imperialism. Fourth, the discovery of oil dealt a death blow to the economic significance of agriculture in the rural areas as a critical development component. Five, there is a gradual abdication of government responsibility to local governance in terms of infrastructural and developmental programmes that manifested through taxation without representation. Six, this was followed increasingly by the gradual collapse of the frameworks of development policy dynamics, like basic data collection of births, deaths, migration, and so on. Seven, there was also the loss of interest in fundamental local services like the local policing system, waste disposal, sanitary standards, etc. Lastly, agriculture—one of the key productive bases of the Nigerian economy before the discovery of oil—collapsed.
It was, therefore, my attachment to Aáwé that gave me my first observation of how the local governance framework could be recuperated. And this came through my closeness to the late Professor Ojetunji Aboyade, who was my clansman and mentor, as well as the late Akinlawon Mabogunje, his friend and collaborator. Both of them were the originators of the Optimum Community (or OPTICOM) development model that draws on the inherent strength of local structures and worldviews as the foundation for development. The methodology for this model involved a critical researcher-masses-producers interaction and engagement that generated culture change dynamics rooted in social mobilisation, strategic communication, extension services, and more. The framework not only allowed the researcher and the people to co-create and synergise on development matters, but it also enabled the critical flow and fusion of knowledge and expertise.
The OPTICOM concept, together with its latter iteration in the Ijebu Development Initiative on Poverty Reduction, initiated by Mabogunje and the Awujale of Ijebuland, constituted the focus of my first doctoral effort, which attempted to deploy political theory and development studies towards the interrogation of the concept and related development models. It was much later that I began to examine the roles traditional structures and leadership in facilitating local governance and development critically, and in also completing the developmental aspirations of the state in a mutually reinforcing manner. This led me to some critical benchmarking of the influence of specific traditional rulers: HRM Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi (the Ooni of Ife), HRM Igwe Nnaemeka Alfred Achebe (the Obi of Onitsha), HRH Muhammadu Sanusi II (the Emir of Kano), Oba Sikiru Kayode Adetona (the Awujale of Ijebu), and others as exemplars of local governance.
These recuperative efforts at the local grassroots level derive their theoretical grounding in several frameworks that give community-based organisations, traditional structures and rulership a significance they have not been provided with. Many scholars have agreed that, at a very minimal level, the concern of development planning and projection is basically with the reduction of poverty, unemployment and inequality in resource distribution. Simple. This is reinforced in academic studies by three complementary theories. First, there is the basic needs approach which insists that economic and national planning must be geared to the fulfilment of human basic requirements—food, shelter, clothing, health, education, etc. Economic growth and progress must be measured and determined in terms of how the quality of life of the citizens is improved qualitatively. Amartya Sen’s capability approach is similar. The efficiency of states and their public service is determined by the extent to which they can improve and increase human capability to live good and qualitative lives in terms of long/healthy life (health), knowledge (education), and a decent standard of living (income). Lastly, there is the social capital approach, which is more concerned with critical features of the human communities that foster trust, civic and social reciprocity and relationships, and the enhancement of social networks grounded on norms of cooperation and collective actions. All these features are the capital assets that the community requires to achieve institutional ties and communal bonding that generate possibilities for development.
All these significant conceptual and theoretical approaches provided the underlying frameworks that ground the UNDP’s Human Development Index, which not only undermined the GDP-centric development measurement, but also fundamentally provides a significant theoretical basis for the poverty reduction strategy founded on the slogan of “leave no one behind”. Among the global initiatives that the strategy inspired are the MDGs and SDGs, which focused on empowering vulnerable populations, and which together contributed to shifting development metrics from income growth towards human flourishing and freedom. This paradigmatic conceptual and theoretical foundation argues that development should be measured by what people are capable of doing and being, rather than simply the income they earn.
And these shifts also had critical implications for how local governance was seen in Nigeria. This was especially grounded within the global discourse on decentralisation and federalism. In 1976, the Ibrahim Dasuki Local Government Reform was significant for its grounding of local governance and administration through its recognition of the local government as the third tier of government. However, in 1977 and 1984, the Nigerian government recognised the deep challenges of enabling the local governments as the functional and efficient third tier of government through the setting up of the Aboyade Revenue Allocation Committee and the Dasuki Local Government Review Committee, respectively. The Aboyade Committee was set up by the Obasanjo regime to interrogate the protracted issue of an equitable distribution of national revenues, and it recommended a sharing formula that gave fifty-seven per cent to the federal government, thirty per cent to the states, 10 per cent to the local governments and three per cent as a special grant. The subsequent Dasuki review of 1984 contributed to the grounding of local government autonomy and financial stability, especially in the face of the challenge of gross subordination to the state governments. It recommended an increased revenue allocation, up to twenty-three per cent, to the local governments. It also fundamentally recommended the establishment of traditional councils that give constitutional roles to traditional rulers in local governance.
But more needs to be done in terms of how to weave together the vision of the Nigerian federation, the policy architecture that grounds the rehabilitation of local governance on which the local government system stands, and the theoretical bases that ought to ground its fundamental significance. This requires reflecting deeply on the practices of local governance from 1976 to date and how they have hindered or enabled democratic governance in Nigeria. Given what we all know about the disconnection between Nigeria’s federal dynamics and the significance of local governance in democratic governance, it bears saying that the local government, as the third tier of government, has so far failed woefully to deliver on the promises of grassroots development and the dividends of democracy. How then do we commence a reflection on the institutional and policy reforms needed, as a matter of urgency, to relocate local governance back to the heart of democracy and development in Nigeria? I have a few suggestions.
The first and most fundamental starting point is legal and constitutional. The structural basis of Nigeria’s federation lies in the constitutional stipulation of the relationships between the tiers of government. It is this legal framework that must be adequately rethought, especially within the ongoing discourse on restructuring of the Nigerian polity. Second, and following on the preceding, this legal and constitutional framework also speaks to the necessity of stipulating how the state, local governments and community/traditional authorities, structures and community-based organisations could collaborate in boosting local governance through self-help and service provision that builds on social capital and the subsidiarity principle, which enables capabilities. The third institutional reform initiative demands the strengthening of inter-governmental development collaborations and partnerships that constitute the structural instigation for survival and consolidation of federalism in Nigeria.
The fifth recommendation involves deepening and consolidating the systems of checks and balances that tie governance and democratic structures and practices. A good example is the World Bank’s Local Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability protocol, which facilitates performance tracking of local government and community-based development programs, projects and initiatives. Six, grassroots and community development is best served through the social mobilisation that mobilises, coordinates, and organises members of the communities into cooperative networks for development. This is where the OPTICOM and the IDIPR models become critical for understanding local governance. Lastly, but definitely not the least, there is the critical need to interrogate the capability deficit of the local governments themselves in terms of capacity deficit that will limit their ability to implement institutional, governance and policy reforms that have the potential to enhance their capability readiness for efficient service delivery to the people.
There is no doubt that the future of democratic governance in Nigeria lies squarely on how we constitutionally and practically manage the functionality of the local government as the third tier of government, and the benefits of local governance and grassroots development it brings. And the Binuyo Foundation has done us a national service by bringing its key significance to our collective consciousness once again.
Being a paper delivered at the 9th annual lecture of the Binuyo Foundation by Prof. Tunji Olaopa, the Chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission, at the Federal School of Surveying, Oyo, on April 25, 2026
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