Did Lagos get zero allocation from the federation account during Tinubu’s tenure?

Obasanjo, Tinubu and Osinbajo played key roles in the Lagos allocation saga

On Saturday, March 27, 2004, elections were conducted by the state government to create 57 LGAs in accordance with Local Government Areas Law No. 5 of 2002 of Lagos State.

Ebonyi, Katsina, Nasarawa and Niger states also created new LGAs at the same time as Lagos.

Former president Olusegun Obasanjo in a letter addressed to Nenadi Usman, minister of state for finance during his administration, said: “As the National Assembly is yet to make the necessary consequential provisions in respect of any of the newly created Local Government Areas in the country, conducting election under or funding any of them from the Federation Account would clearly be a violation of the constitution.


“Consequently, no allocation from the Federation Account should henceforth be released to the Local Government Councils of the above-mentioned States and any other State that may fall into that category, until they revert to their constituent Local Government Areas specified in Part I of the First Schedule to the Constitution.”

Following the directive by the federal government to withhold funding for the LGAs in the affected states, other states returned to the status quo except for Lagos, which opted for litigation.

Yemi Osinbajo, then attorney-general of Lagos, argued that Obasanjo, under section 162 subsection (4) and (5) of the 1999 constitution, could only exercise executive powers and not legislative or judicial authority to withhold funds due to the local government from the federation account.

The supreme court in its judgement indicated that the president does not have the power to withhold the funds for 20 local government areas. It also instructed that the funds be released.

However, the judgement did not recognise the new local government areas created by the Lagos state government.

Despite the judgement, the federal government withheld local government funds from April 2004 until the end of both Tinubu and Obasanjo’s administrations. The funds were later released to the next Lagos state administration by Umar Musa Yar’Adua, Obasanjo’s successor.

TheCable spoke with Muda Yusuf, a former director-general of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), to confirm the claim that the state got “zero allocation”.

“It was zero allocation to the local governments and not the state,” the economist said.


Data from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) show that Lagos received N11.7 billion statutory allocations from the federal government in 2001. Several links to the CBN archive which ordinarily would reveal state allocation for other years between 1999 and 2007 when Tinubu was governor are currently broken.

Based on data from the Office of the Accountant General of Federation (OAGF), BudgIT, in its Lagos state Data book published in 2018, revealed that Lagos received a net FAAC allocation of N48.62 billion in 2007, the year Tinubu left office.

Summary

At no time during Tinubu’s administration was Lagos denied state allocation from the federation account, only local government funds were suspended from 2004 to 2007.

The claim that Lagos state had zero allocation is false.