VZCZCXRO7096
RR RUEHMA RUEHPA
DE RUEHNM #0137/01 0450917
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 140917Z FEB 07
FM AMEMBASSY NIAMEY
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 3255
INFO RUEHZK/ECOWAS COLLECTIVE
RUEHFR/AMEMBASSY PARIS 0509

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 NIAMEY 000137 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE, SIPDIS 
 
DEPT. FOR AF/W, BACHMAN; PASS TO USAID FOR KTOWERS; INR/AA FOR 
BOGOSIAN; PARIS FOR AFRICA WATCHER; ACCRA AND DAKAR FOR USAID 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV EAGR EAID ECON SOCI SMIG NG
SUBJECT: NIGER TRIP REPORTS (2) TAHOUA & THE CHALLENGES OF 
DECENTRALIZATION 
 
REF NIAMEY 76, NIAMEY 62, 06 Niamey 1075 
 
------- 
SUMMARY 
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¶1. (SBU) This is the second cable in a series commenting on issues 
examined by Poloff during December travel to northern and central 
Niger. This edition examines some of the challenges facing Niger's 
process of political decentralization. Since 2004, the Government of 
Niger (GON) has tried to devolve power over local decision-making to 
elected officials. Two years on, decentralization remains Niger's 
greatest democratization challenge. While the process remains 
popular, resource constraints, high local expectations, questionable 
commitment by the GON, and occasionally weak performance by local 
officials suggest an uncertain future. Poloff examined local 
government performance in Niger's 4th largest city, Tahoua, and 
found cause for guarded optimism. 
 
¶2. (SBU) While in Tahoua, Poloff also examined issues of religion 
and the re-insertion of Tuareg ex-combatants from the Azaouagh zone. 
These issues are addressed, respectively, by reftels A & B. END 
SUMMARY 
 
--------------- 
TAHOUA OVERVIEW 
--------------- 
 
¶3. (U) The city of Tahoua (pop. est. 114,000) is Niger's 4th 
largest. Along with Niamey, Maradi, and Zinder, it is one of 4 
"urban communities," in Niger. Urban communities consist of one or 
more urban communes, which function rather as boroughs would in 
London or New York City-as administrative sub-units with some degree 
of autonomy. The chief central government administrator for the 
urban communities is the regional governor. NOTE: Niamey, alone 
among the urban communities, constitutes coterminous region, and 
therefore has its own governor. The urban communities of Tahoua, 
Maradi, and Zinder share governors with their respective regions. 
END NOTE. Tahoua is also the capital of the region of Tahoua and the 
Department of Tahoua. 
 
---------------------------- 
   Decentralization Challenges 
   and the Urban Community. 
---------------------------- 
 
¶4. (U) Poloff met with the President of the Urban Community of 
Tahoua, Elhadji Dodo Abdou Ouhou, several municipal counselors, the 
city's two commune mayors, and a civil servant who assists them. 
Tahoua has two urban communes, each with a council and mayor. The 
President of the Urban Community is an overarching "Lord Mayor" 
responsible for the entire city. He is charged with coordination of 
urban commune actions and with representing the entire polity to GON 
entities. 
 
¶5. (SBU) Decentralization continues to pose problems of capacity and 
organization in Tahoua. Our interlocutors argued that the relevant 
texts still aren't well understood by illiterate councilors and 
citizens. The President, two commune Mayors, and five counselors 
attending the meeting agreed that the process, while still popular, 
saddled them with a devastating combination of enormous 
responsibilities and insufficient resources. 
 
¶6. (SBU) Resource insufficiency was due both to substandard revenue 
sharing by the GON and Tahoua's own inability to mobilize local 
sources of revenue. Property taxes, collected by the GON on behalf 
of the communes, had for years been shared @ 60% for the GON and 40% 
for the communes. In 2006, the communes' share was abruptly cut to 
just 20% by the new revenue law. Overall, Tahoua's revenue stream 
breaks down like this: 
 
--40% of the Urban Community (both communes included) budget derives 
from GON revenue sharing. These funds, perceived as more constant 
from year to year than locally collected revenues, have been used to 
make payroll. 
 
--24% of the budget derives from the "taxe voirie" or road tax 
leveled on vehicles passing through. Interestingly, this forms a 
bigger part of Tahoua Commune I's budget (25%) than Commune II's 
(14%), probably owing to the fact that the former contains the 
autogare, or small bus station-a lucrative source of revenue. The 
Urban Community was only able to collect about 30% of the potential 
revenue from road tax this year, due to a variety of problems 
besetting collection. 
 
--36% of the budget derives from other local taxes on markets, small 
businesses, animals, municipal services, and the head tax. 
 
 
NIAMEY 00000137  002 OF 003 
 
 
¶7. (SBU) All in all, Tahoua's revenue picture seemed grim-the tax 
recovery rate is 14% overall. In other words, the city is only able 
to collect about 42 million CFA ($83,000) out of a potential 300 
million CFA ($592,000) in revenue each year. Given the GON's 
stingier revenue sharing this year, Tahoua city is in a bind. 
 
¶8. (U) The local elected officials are responding to the crisis of 
"incivisme fiscale"-the culture of tax avoidance-in a variety of 
ways. They are working with traditional chiefs to convince people to 
pay their taxes. To this end, they have established a working group 
of neighborhood chiefs and municipal tax technicians that will 
conduct a comprehensive revenue census. The census will then serve 
as a basis for assessing tax payments. The group will also 
popularize the notion that paying your taxes can yield important 
benefits-like cleaner streets, tree plantings, and public water 
points. 
 
¶9. (U) Poor people, our interlocutors emphasized, still have trouble 
seeing the value of tax payment, as no results are immediately 
apparent. Others traced the roots of the problem deeper into the 
past, claiming that Nigeriens' reluctance to pay taxes was a 
phenomenon of long standing; cultural, and related to the colonial 
experience. In the optimistic view of some participants, two years 
after commune elections was too proximate a point from which to 
judge the process. Most things, they noted, move slowly in Niger, 
and decentralization's teething problems may not suggest a lack of 
political will at the center. 
 
¶10. (SBU) When Poloff asked about the underlying causes of the GON's 
seeming neglect of the communes, answers varied from such optimistic 
views to more realistic responses. Some participants conceded that 
decentralization had both friends and enemies at the center, and 
that they would have to lobby hard to convince the GON to live up to 
its legal commitments to the process. 
 
¶11.  (SBU) Tahoua's councilors are doing just that-using the GON's 
High Commission for Territorial Collectivities (HCCT) and the 
Association of Nigerien Municipalities (AMN) to lobby the government 
on their behalf. Poloff reminded the group that donors could help 
them to a certain degree, but that foreign aid would matter little 
unless matched with stronger revenue collection and a stronger GON 
commitment-in CFA-to the decentralization process. 
 
¶12.  (SBU) COMMENT: The incoherence with which the GON's 
decentralization portfolio is divided up between various 
actors--HCCT, Ministry of Interior and Decentralization, Ministry of 
Land Management and Community Development, and High Commission for 
the Modernization of the State, etc.--is one cause of the 
difficulty. END COMMENT 
 
---------------------------------- 
A Lotus in the Mud? Commune I 
Shows What a Little Leadership Can 
  (and Can't) Accomplish 
  ----------------------------------- 
 
¶13.  (U) Against this rather bleak backdrop, Tahoua Commune I (pop. 
est. 48,000) stands out as a relative success story. While hardly 
immune from the problems of revenue collection and "incivisme 
fiscale" more broadly evident in Tahoua, number I has at least come 
up with some good ideas with which to address them. Behind every 
successful commune, there seems to be a dynamic mayor. Commune I's 
Mayor Elhadji Albala Sofo, is a case in point. A young hadji and 
nephew of the Chef de Canton, Sofo is an enthusiastic manager who 
knows his commune inside and out. He has no shortage of good, 
realistic ideas for improving municipal services and the municipal 
revenue stream. Among the more prominent and interesting of these 
ideas is that of a new autogare or bush taxi bus station-a resource 
that would allow Commune I to build on its most viable revenue 
base. 
 
¶14.  (U) The commune already gets 20 million CFA ($39,000) in annual 
revenue from the current autogare, located in downtown Tahoua. 
Because of the ease of access and lack of controls inherent in the 
current site, transporters are often able to avoid paying taxes and 
fees. Mayor Sofo wants to build a new, 40 million CFA ($79,000) 
autogare on the outskirts of town near the intersection of the 
Tahoua - Agadez highway. The site has already been cleared, walled 
off, and partly paved. The commune would complete it-adding a police 
station, public restroom facilities, and an administrative building 
in the process. 
 
¶15.  (U) The new autogare would generate at least 30-35 million CFA 
($59,000-$69,000) a year in revenue for the commune. Not only would 
it be subject to stricter management controls than possible at the 
present autogare, it would double as a shopping center, with 100 or 
so purpose-built concrete shops that would be rented out to local 
shopkeepers, many of whom are looking for new sites outside of the 
 
NIAMEY 00000137  003 OF 003 
 
 
crowded downtown area. Located at a key intersection near the 
fire-station and a new technical college, the new autogare seems a 
great idea in the history of urban planning (in Niger). Many local 
shopkeepers are already on board, and passengers would undoubtedly 
love the convenience, space, and ready access to services afforded 
by the new autogare. 
 
¶16.  (U) The real problem is a lack of start up capital. Between 
1991 and 1996, the GON tried a public sector, statist solution to 
the problem of municipal capital project financing. It created the 
Caisse des Prets des Collectivites Territorial (CPCT), which 
financed a great number of projects including Tahoua's city hall. 
Subject to massive political meddling, it had trouble leaning on its 
borrowers, especially during the public sector financial crises of 
the mid-1990s. Non-repayment of billions of CFA in outstanding loans 
led both to the collapse of the CPCT in '96, and to the continuing 
reluctance of private banks to provide communes with credit 
 
-------------------------------- 
LESSONS LEARNED AT THE TOWN DUMP 
-------------------------------- 
 
¶17.  (U) The town dump illustrated an important truth: in Niger, 
every solution seems to pose a problem. Commune I's first goal was 
to address "assainissement"-public sanitation-one of the key 
concerns of every commune government. The commune's officials had to 
encourage people to clean out their lots and put the garbage out. 
Sensitization efforts in this regard produced a great success. 
People learned to bring their garbage to local collection points 
throughout the commune and a problem was solved, yet another was 
thereby posed. 
 
¶18.  (U) Commune I only has 12 overtaxed donkey carts to collect and 
transport the waste from the collection points to the dump. Garbage 
trucks are available, but @ 66,000 CFA ($130) a day, too expensive 
to rent very often. A bulldozer for the dump would set the commune 
back 50,000 CFA, ($98) exclusive of fuel and staff costs etc. While 
we toured the dump, watching donkey carts pull up with small loads 
of garbage, the councilors noted that even the refuse that made it 
that far posed a public health problem. Lacking a fence, watchman, 
or any other means of deterrence, the dump is a site for nocturnal 
scavenging. 
 
--------------------------------------------- - 
COMMENT: DECENTRALIZTION, WHOSE CHILD IS THIS? 
--------------------------------------------- - 
 
¶19.  (SBU) COMMENT: Garbage collection and municipal sanitation are, 
at once, the most essential and most logistically difficult tasks 
urban communes must accomplish. Getting these things right enables 
communes to demonstrate their value to the taxpayers who might 
thereby be more inclined to pay their taxes. However, given the 
relatively high costs and logistical complexity of the task, 
communes need substantial amounts of money to effect it-yielding 
another catch 22 for Niger's local officials. 
 
¶20.  (SBU) The central problem remains a lack of investment and 
revenue sharing by the central government, and communes' inability 
to collect local taxes. Donors should devote more attention to 
projects designed to increase revenue generation and collection. 
They should also call on the GON to be more supportive of its new 
communes. While donor pressure was a key factor behind 
decentralization in the first place, the process will hardly prove 
sustainable if donors' commitments are not matched by GON political 
and budgetary support. Yet, this begs the question: how far should 
donors go in supporting decentralization if the GON fails to keep 
its part of the bargain?  END COMMENT. 
ALLEN