The 1999 Constitution recognizes three tiers of government in Nigeria: federal, state, and local. There are 774 local government areas in the country. They are listed in the First Schedule of the Constitution. They have chairmen. They have councillors. They receive monthly allocations from the Federation Account.

And most of them do not function.

This is not an exaggeration. It is not a political opinion. It is a structural fact. The local government — the tier of government closest to the people, the one that is supposed to build your roads, maintain your primary schools, manage your health clinics, register your births and deaths, and collect your refuse — has been systematically hollowed out by state governors who treat local government funds as personal revenue.

Here is how it works. Every month, the Federation Account Allocation Committee distributes revenue to the three tiers of government. The local government share — roughly 20 percent of the total — is sent to State Joint Local Government Accounts. These accounts are controlled by the state governor. The governor is supposed to distribute the funds to the 774 local governments. In practice, many governors simply keep the money.

This is not a secret. It has been documented by the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission. It has been challenged in court. In 2024, the Supreme Court ruled that local government funds must be paid directly to local governments, not through state joint accounts. The ruling was celebrated as a landmark. Whether it will be enforced is another question entirely.

The result of decades of this arrangement is that local governments in Nigeria are, for most citizens, invisible. You cannot name your local government chairman. You do not know when the council meets. You have never seen a budget for your local government area. You have never been invited to a town hall meeting. The roads are not built. The clinics are not staffed. The schools are not maintained. And the money that was supposed to pay for all of this has disappeared into a joint account that you have no access to and no oversight of.

The Constitution gives you the right to democratic governance at the local level. Section 7 states that the system of local government by democratically elected local government councils is guaranteed. This means that your local government chairman should be elected by you — not appointed by the governor, not selected by the party, not imposed by anyone. Elected. By you.

In many states, local government elections have not been held in years. Some states have not held them in over a decade. Instead, governors appoint caretaker committees — unelected officials who answer to the governor, not to you. This is unconstitutional. It is also normal.

The local government is where democracy is supposed to begin. It is the first place where a citizen encounters the state — not as an abstraction, but as a pothole that gets filled or does not, a clinic that has medicine or does not, a school that has teachers or does not. When that tier of government does not work, democracy itself becomes abstract. It becomes something that happens in Abuja, on television, to other people.

You have the right to a functioning local government. You have the right to elect your local government chairman. You have the right to see the budget. You have the right to know how much money your local government receives and how it is spent.

These rights exist on paper. Whether they exist in your life depends on whether you demand them. And demanding them starts with knowing that they are yours.