Nigeria does not suffer from a shortage of government; it suffers from a shortage of governance. Nowhere is this failure more glaring than at the local government level, where chairmen collect substantial monthly allocations yet leave communities stranded on impassable feeder roads, even in the dry season, when excuses about weather collapse under basic scrutiny.
The 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended) is unambiguous on this matter. Section 7(1) guarantees a system of local government by democratically elected councils.
This guarantee is not ceremonial; it carries enforceable responsibilities. More pointedly, the Fourth Schedule assigns core functions to local governments, including the construction and maintenance of roads, streets, drains, and other public facilities within their areas of jurisdiction. Road grading, basic,, routine, low-capital maintenance, falls squarely within this mandate.
Yet across the country, feeder roads that connect farms to markets, schools to homes, and clinics to villages are left to decay.
This is not a funding problem. Local governments receive statutory allocations from the Federation Account monthly, in addition to internally generated revenues and, in many states, joint account transfers. When roads remain impassable during the dry season, when grading is cheapest and most effective, it is evidence of administrative neglect, misprioritization, or outright dereliction of duty.
The consequences are severe and measurable. Impassable feeder roads choke local economies, inflate food prices, discourage agricultural productivity, and worsen rural poverty. Children trek dangerous paths to school; pregnant women risk their lives reaching health centres; security agencies lose response time. Governance failures at the grassroots cascade upward, undermining state and national development goals.
Defenders of the status quo often point fingers at state governments and the much-criticized State, Local Government Joint Account system. While structural interference is real, it does not absolve local chairmen of responsibility. Governance is about choices. Even within constraints, prioritizing routine road grading, deploying graders, maintaining culverts, clearing drains is a minimum standard, not an aspirational one.
What we are witnessing is a troubling normalization of office without output. Chairmen preside over councils as political rewards rather than service platforms, reducing governance to payroll administration and ceremonial appearances. This violates not only the spirit of the Constitution but its letter.
The remedy is straightforward and urgent. Local government chairmen must be held accountable to constitutional benchmarks, not political patrons. Communities, traditional institutions, civil society, and the media must insist on visible, verifiable projects, starting with access roads. State Houses of Assembly, empowered under the Constitution to exercise oversight, must stop treating local councils as appendages and start enforcing performance standards.
Nigeria’s development will not be built from the top down alone. It begins on graded roads, not press statements. Until local governments fulfill their constitutional duty to maintain access roads and basic infrastructure, we will continue to have government everywhere and governance nowhere.
