Nigeria is fond of hierarchies. We speak of the Federal Government as the “top”, the state as the “middle”, the local government as the “bottom”. This vocabulary is not just inaccurate — it is actively harmful. It has convinced two generations of our brightest citizens that the local government is where careers go to die.
I want to submit that the opposite is true. The local government is the only tier of Nigerian government where policy actually meets the citizen. Everything above it is abstraction; everything below it is folklore. The council chairman who cannot fix a drainage on Ile Iwe Street cannot credibly discuss federalism at a conference in Abuja.
What Eight Years in Ejigbo Taught Me
I served two terms as Executive Chairman of the Ejigbo LCDA between 2008 and 2014. Nothing in my later cabinet appointment came close, in complexity or in moral weight, to what happens between a council chairman and the mother who walks into his office at 9 a.m. with a hungry child. Federal ministers deal with policy documents. Council chairmen deal with people. The distance between the two vocations is greater than any promotion suggests.
Three lessons stay with me.
Lesson one: The council chairman is a first responder, not a policy-maker.
Every morning in Ejigbo brought a queue: burst pipe on Powerline Bus Stop, drainage blockage in Igbehinadun, unregistered market stall on Isolo Road, orphaned child dropped at the council gate by an unnamed relative. The chairman who spends his mornings drafting five-year plans while the queue grows outside his door will find, at the end of his term, that both the plans and the citizens have abandoned him.
Lesson two: Revenue is a conversation, not a decree.
The Ejigbo LCDA collected the bulk of its revenue from craft associations and market women. When we tried to increase rates unilaterally, revenue collapsed. When we negotiated increases in partnership with the Professionals and Marketers Association, revenue actually rose — because compliance rose. The chairman who treats his citizens as taxpayers rather than as partners will collect less, not more.
Lesson three: The council must be visible to be trusted.
For most of my two terms, I held a monthly town hall — every third Saturday, in a different ward, without exception. I answered questions I did not want to answer. I made commitments I later had to keep at personal political cost. The town halls were exhausting. They were also the single most important investment I made in the legitimacy of my administration.
Why Local Government Matters More Than Ever
Nigeria’s crisis of governance is often diagnosed as a crisis of the federal centre. I disagree. Nigeria’s crisis of governance is a crisis of the local base. When local government functions — when refuse is collected, when primary schools are staffed, when local markets are safe, when disputes are mediated — the federal government has room to focus on its proper concerns. When local government fails, the federal government is dragged into a thousand small emergencies it was not designed to handle.
The solution is not more federal intervention. The solution is a serious rehabilitation of the local government tier — constitutional autonomy, secured revenue, capacity building, and, most importantly, a cultural shift in how we regard those who serve there.
A Personal Plea
To the young politician reading this: do not begin your career at the state assembly if you have not first served in a ward. Do not aspire to the federal legislature if you have not first attended, faithfully, the meetings of your local development association. The politicians who skip the local base always, without exception, govern at the federal level as if the country were an abstraction. It is not an abstraction. It is Ile Iwe Street, and Powerline Bus Stop, and the mother at your council gate at 9 a.m. with a hungry child.
Serve there first. Everything after will make more sense.
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