BY LANRE OGUNDIPE
IN DISCUSSIONS of structural reform, decentralisation is routinely presented as a self-evident virtue. The logic appears straightforward: move administrative authority, regulatory power and public resources closer to the people, and governance becomes more responsive, bureaucracy less cumbersome and public institutions more accountable to those they serve. From local government financial autonomy to state policing and sub-national regulatory agencies, the devolution of authority is often presented as an antidote to the failures of excessive centralisation.
Yet beneath the promise of decentralisation lies a structural danger that reform debates too often overlook: power can be transferred faster than accountability.
Nigeria is now moving seriously towards a decentralised policing framework. The argument for state policing is compelling in one respect: security is local, and a policing structure capable of understanding local intelligence, geography, language and community relationships may respond more effectively than an excessively centralised system.
Power moved downward without an equivalent system of independent accountability does not necessarily liberate the citizen. It can simply make power more immediate, more concentrated and harder to challenge.
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That is the power-without-a-referee problem.
At the national level, executive authority operates within a dense network of constitutional institutions, legislative scrutiny, judicial review, media attention and civil-society pressure. None of these mechanisms is perfect, and none guarantees accountability. But they provide competing points at which executive action can be questioned.
At the sub-national level, authority can become much more intimate. The institution exercising power may be only a few streets away from the citizen, but physical proximity does not automatically produce accountability. When a local authority receives greater discretion over money, regulation, enforcement or public order without corresponding mechanisms for independent scrutiny and appeal, decentralisation can produce a smaller version of the very problem it was designed to solve.
The issue is therefore not whether power should be decentralised. It should, where decentralisation improves representation and service delivery. The question is what travels with that power.
Consider the continuing debate over local government financial autonomy. The Supreme Court’s landmark intervention against the handling of local government funds through state-level joint arrangements was rightly seen as a significant assertion of constitutional local-government authority. The expectation is that greater control over their finances should enable councils to respond more directly to the needs of their communities.
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But financial autonomy does not, by itself, create financial accountability.
Nigeria’s constitutional framework already provides for auditing of local government accounts and legislative consideration of audit reports. The harder question is whether those mechanisms are sufficiently independent, effective, timely and accessible to prevent misuse of the greater discretion that financial autonomy creates. A council that receives funds more directly still requires credible systems for citizens to know what was received, what was spent, what was procured, what was delivered and who authorised the expenditure.
Otherwise, the country risks confusing the removal of one gatekeeper with the creation of accountability.
A state governor who once exercised excessive influence over local finances may no longer stand between a council and its allocation. That is a constitutional gain. But if the council itself can subsequently spend those resources without effective scrutiny, the citizen has merely exchanged one concentration of power for another. The danger is not that autonomy itself is wrong. It is that autonomy without enforceable accountability can create the conditions for local political fiefdoms.
The same problem appears in sub-national regulatory and enforcement systems.
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Across the states, agencies and task forces exercise powers over traffic management, environmental regulation, building control, markets, signage, sanitation, transport and revenue collection. Such authority is often necessary. A functioning government must be able to enforce rules.
But the citizen needs to know what happens when the enforcer is wrong.
The danger becomes particularly acute where an institution responsible for enforcing a regulation is also expected to generate revenue from penalties, impoundments, permits or other enforcement activities. The existence of a revenue target does not prove that enforcement decisions are being manipulated. But it creates a potential conflict of interest that should concern every serious administrator.
A regulator whose institutional performance is partly judged by the money its enforcement activities generate has an obvious incentive that deserves independent scrutiny. The citizen who disputes a fine, seizure or impoundment should not have to appeal to another arm of the same machinery whose financial interests may be tied to the original decision.
Decentralisation should not mean replacing one distant leviathan with a thousand local ones. It should mean bringing government closer to the people while bringing accountability even closer.
Who regulates the regulator? Who hears the citizen? Who examines the evidence? Who can order restitution when the state is wrong?
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These are not peripheral questions. They are the architecture of accountable government.
The issue becomes even more consequential in security.
Nigeria is now moving seriously towards a decentralised policing framework. The argument for state policing is compelling in one respect: security is local, and a policing structure capable of understanding local intelligence, geography, language and community relationships may respond more effectively than an excessively centralised system.
But decentralised policing also raises a question that must be answered before power is transferred: who referees the new police?
The emerging state-policing framework recognises the importance of independent oversight, complaints mechanisms, human-rights safeguards, discipline, financial sustainability and clear jurisdiction. That is significant because it demonstrates that decentralisation and accountability are not competing principles. They are supposed to travel together.
The lesson extends beyond policing.
Whenever government gives a lower tier the authority to collect money, seize property, impose penalties, restrict movement, regulate businesses, enforce public-order rules or exercise coercive powers, the citizen should have access to an independent mechanism capable of questioning that authority.
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Not every dispute requires a new institution. Existing courts, auditors, legislatures, ombudsman-type mechanisms, human-rights institutions and administrative review structures can perform different parts of the function. The important point is that the referee must not be structurally dependent on the official whose decision it is supposed to review.
This is where decentralisation debates often become too simplistic.
The choice is presented as though Nigeria must choose between a powerful centre and empowered local institutions. That is the wrong choice.
The real choice is between concentrated power with weak accountability and distributed power with distributed accountability.
A local government should have the authority to govern, but citizens should have meaningful ways of questioning how its resources are used. A state regulatory agency should have the authority to enforce the law, but the person it penalises should have a credible avenue of appeal. A state police service should possess the authority necessary to protect lives and property, but its officers must remain answerable to institutions capable of investigating misconduct independently of the political authority that controls the service.
This is not an argument against decentralisation. It is an argument for completing it.
Because decentralising power without decentralising accountability produces an odd constitutional paradox: government becomes closer to the citizen without necessarily becoming more answerable to the citizen.
The closer the exercise of power comes to ordinary life, the more important independent oversight becomes. A distant abuse of authority can be difficult to reach. A local abuse can become part of everyday existence: the roadside checkpoint, the seized vehicle, the disputed levy, the demolished shop, the withheld allocation, the unanswered petition, the unexplained procurement or the security officer who knows that the person complaining has nowhere else to turn.
That is why every serious decentralisation reform should answer four questions before celebrating the transfer of authority: Who exercises the power? Who pays for it? Who monitors it? And who can overrule it when it is abused?
The first two questions are usually answered quickly. The last two are where institutional reform becomes real.
True federalism is therefore not the uncritical distribution of unchecked authority to lower tiers of government. It is the systematic distribution of both power and checks on power.
Decentralisation should not mean replacing one distant leviathan with a thousand local ones. It should mean bringing government closer to the people while bringing accountability even closer.
Because the real test of devolved power is not who receives the authority. It is who can say no when that authority is abused.
That is the referee problem. And until we solve it, we are not decentralising democracy. We are decentralising power.
Ogundipe, public affairs analyst and former President Nigeria and Africa Union of Journalists, writes this column every Monday.
