Nigeria’s Minister of Finance and Supervisory Minister of the Economy, Mr. Olawale Edun, on Thursday has expressed the Federal Gvernment’s concerns over the implementation of the fiscal autonomy for local governments in the country, saying that there are some practical impediments to the implementation of direct disbursement of funds from the federation account to the third tiers of government.
The minister, who made this remark during his quarterly briefing of journalists on the performance of the Nigerian economy in Abuja, said the Federal Government was yet to commence the monthly allocation of funds to local governments due to the impediments, adding, however, that the process is still in its early stages.
The minister pointed out that the current situation remained now a new fiscal regime where through the state and local governments joint account funding goes directly to the local governments.
He clarified: “There is a committee involving the Attorney-General as well as local government representatives, states and of course the federal government comprising the federal account allocation committee (FAAC) that is looking at the practicality of moving to work with what the supreme court has said.
“There are practical impediments to yielding the implementation and governors have moved immediately to uphold the local government because funds have to go to the elected government.
“There was a FAAC meeting just last week but they could not implement it because the actual proceedings have not been handed down to the attorney general to start implementing. So that is what is going to happen”, Edun added
According to him, President Tinubu believes in the rule of law and the recent Supreme Court’s judgment which granted fiscal autonomy of the local governments will be implemented
It would be recalled that on July 11 this year in a historic judgment the Supreme Court ruled that the disbursements of funds from the federation account to the local governments can be paid directly by the FAAC to the local governments as opposed to the past process of paying their allocations to joint accounts being controlled by the state governments.
