Local Government Autonomy, Dapo Abiodun And Tinubu

 President Bola Ahmed Tinubu will be remembered for many things, but perhaps none more consequential than his battle to liberate Nigeria's 774 local governments from the stranglehold of state governors. His administration's pursuit of full local government autonomy, culminating in the historic Supreme Court ruling of July 11, 2024, represents a defining legacy, a constitutional restoration that promised to transform grassroots governance and deliver democracy's dividends directly to the people. Yet as the President wages this war for fiscal federalism from Abuja, one of his own party men has emerged as chief saboteur of the very reform Tinubu champions. Governor Dapo Abiodun of Ogun State, wearing the same APC badge as the President, has become the poster child for everything wrong with local government administration in Nigeria, a governor who smiles at party meetings while systematically frustrating the autonomy the Supreme Court has guaranteed and the President has staked his legacy upon.

The contradiction reached its peak last Thursday when Abiodun, through his Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, presented twenty brand-new Toyota Corolla Cross 2025 SUVs to his local government chairmen. The vehicles gleamed under the Abeokuta sun, their metallic paint catching the light like promises wrapped in cellophane. Cameras flashed. Speeches were made about 'enhancing effective governance at the grassroots' and 'facilitating swift outreach to rural communities.' The timing could not have been more calculated, a Christmas Eve spectacle staged while President Tinubu, at the 15th National Executive Committee meeting of their shared APC, was threatening executive orders to force governors to comply with the Supreme Court's autonomy mandate. While the President demanded compliance, his Ogun State governor was buying loyalty with luxury vehicles. While Tinubu fought for constitutional implementation, Abiodun was distributing keys to a system designed to perpetuate the very dependence the President seeks to end.

This is not just political theater. This is open defiance dressed as generosity, a Greek gift in the truest sense, an offering whose hidden cost far exceeds its visible value. To understand why those twenty SUVs represent such a profound betrayal of President Tinubu's vision, you must first understand what that vision was meant to achieve. For decades, Nigerian governors have treated local government allocations as personal piggy banks, routing billions through State Joint Local Government Accounts that the Constitution never envisioned, and the Supreme Court has now condemned. The result? Nigeria's grassroots communities—the very bedrock of democracy, languish in underdevelopment while allocations meant for rural roads, primary health centres, and village schools vanish into state-level black holes.

President Tinubu understood this dysfunction intimately from his years governing Lagos State. His push for local government autonomy was not abstract policy wonkery, it was a structural reform designed to restore Section 162 of the Constitution, which explicitly mandates direct payment of allocations from the Federation Account to local governments. No intermediaries. No state control. No governors playing God with grassroots money. The Supreme Court's seven-member panel delivered exactly what Tinubu's Attorney General requested: a declaration that state retention of local government funds is unconstitutional, that the use of caretaker committees violates the 1999 Constitution, and that local governments must receive their allocations directly to enable independent decision-making, revenue management, and service delivery.

That was July 2024. Eighteen months later, nothing has fundamentally changed. Between July 2024 and December 2025, a staggering ₦7.43 trillion allocated to Nigeria's local governments flowed through the very State Joint Account system the Supreme Court outlawed. Seven point four three trillion naira, ₦2.08 trillion in the second half of 2024, another ₦5.35 trillion throughout 2025. Monthly allocations peaked at ₦529.95 billion by October 2025. All of it passing through state-controlled structures. All of it subject to deductions, delays, and the discretion of governors who have grown comfortable ignoring both the Supreme Court and their own President. Governor Abiodun's Ogun State has been exemplary only in its defiance. [/b]While President Tinubu's patience wears thin enough to threaten federal intervention, [b]his party colleague in Abeokuta acts as though the Supreme Court ruling was merely a suggestion, autonomy merely an aspiration, and presidential directives merely background noise to be drowned out by the purr of twenty new SUV engines

https://applesbite.com/governor-dapo-abiodun-and-his-greek-gift/