Intergovernmental Relations in Nigeria: An Assessment of Its Practice at the Local Government Level

Abstract

Perhaps, an appropriate premise to commence this discourse is to embark on the clarification of the concept of intergovernmental relations because of the attendant confusion that besmeared the concept. For instance, there has been an erroneous misconception that intergovernmental relations can only be discussed only meaningfully in a federal arrangement (Ayoade, 1980). For a proper clarification of the concept, three schools of thought have developed. The first school contends that intergovernmental relations can only exist in a federal system, the second posits that intergovernmental relations can both exist within a federal structure and as well as a unitary system of government, while the third school says that intergovernmental relations could as well include international relations Bamgbose, 2008).

The lesson we can learn from the above is that, intergovernmental relations exists both in the federal and unitary structures and in fact, the clamour that intergovernmental relations is only associated with the federal system should be discarded when we remember the Livingstonian definition of federalism which says that…’Federalism is not an absolute but a relative term; there is no identifiable point at which a society ceases to be unified and becomes diversified. All communities fall somewhere in a spectrum, this runs from what we may call a theoretically wholly integrated society at one extreme to a theoretically wholly diversified society at the other (Rhodes, 1983).

Further still, Wright while alluding to the work of Bogdanor pointed out that other features of intergovernmental relations that set it apart from federalism included:

1. prominence of policy (rather than mainly legal) issues,
2. inclusion of all governmental entities-local units in addition to national-state (federal) relations,
3. importance of officials’ attitudes and actions,
4. regular, continuous day to day interactions among officials and,
5. inclusion of all types of public officials- especially administrators in addition to elected officials (Wright, 1995).

Intergovernmental relations (IGRs) do not just imply relationship between different government organs but involves both the citizens and governmental institutions, agencies and officials. It takes into account the said agencies and officials at various levels of the governmental operations. It is very difficult for the policy formulators to make any policy by keeping it isolated from the effect and impact of the other governmental agencies in existence at different. From the above exposition, how then can we define the concept of intergovernmental relations?