* Faults Oyo, Katsina govs
Hard earned victory came the way of local government administration Friday following the judgment of the Supreme Court, which shielded the third tier of government from the highhandedness of State governors.
In fact, the Supreme Court, in two separate judgments, declared Friday that State governors have no power to sack democratically elected local government chairmen and councilors.
The apex court said the 2015 dissolution of the 34 LGs in Katsina State by Governor Aminu Masari and the 2019 sack of the chairmen and councilors of the 33 LGs and 35 Local Council Development Areas in Oyo State by Governor Seyi Makinde were in breach of Section 7(1) of the 1999 Constitution.
The five-man panel was unanimous in the judgments.
Youth and Sports Development Minister, Sunday Dare, and the Chairman Senate Committee on Local Content, Chief Teslim Folarin, hailed the court for the verdicts.
The Supreme Court held that Masari and Makinde acted illegally and unconstitutionally by removing democratically elected Local Government Councils.
The two judgments arose from the appeals filed by sacked LG chairmen and councilors from both states.
The LG chairmen and councilors from the 34 LGs in Katsina, led by Abubakar Ibrahim Yantaba, were elected on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) but were sacked in 2015 by Masari of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Those from the 33 local government areas (LGAs) and 35 local council development areas (LCDAs) in Oyo State, led by Ayodeji Abass-Aleshinloye, were elected under the banner of the APC but were sacked in 2019 by Makinde of the PDP.
Justice Adamu Jauro, who read the lead judgment in the appeal on Katsina, ruled that Masari acted ultra vires by sacking the appellants on allegation of financial misappropriation of councils’ funds.
Justice Jauro ordered the Katsina State government to pay the appellants all their entitlements from the date of their illegal dissolution to the date they were supposed to lawfully vacate office.
In the case of Oyo State, Justice Ejembi Eko, in the lead judgment, said Makinde acted “invidiously and in contemptuous disregard of a High Court judgment” when he dissolved the democratically elected chairmen and councilors and appointed caretaker committees to replace them.
Justice Eko set aside the judgment by the Court of Appeal in Ibadan, which validated Makinde’s action, noting that the lower court was wrong when it held that there was no reasonable cause of action in the suit the appellants filed to stop their sack.
He noted that the three-year tenure of the sacked chairmen and councilors has since expired, but he proceeded to hold that they deserve to be compensated for their tenure that was “illegally truncated” on May 29, 2019.
Justice Eko therefore ordered the Oyo State government to pay the sacked chairmen and councilors their accrued salaries and allowances.
He ordered the Attorney-General of Oyo State to file an affidavit before August 7 this year confirming the payment of the salaries and allowances to the appellants.
He equally awarded a cost of N20 million in favour of the appellants.
Other members of the panel, Justices Kekere Ekun, Inyang Okoro, Ibrahim Saulawa and Adamu Jauro, agreed with the lead judgment.
The Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, had faulted Makinde’s decision in a January 14, 2020 letter.
In the letter marked HAGF/OYO/2020/Vol.1/1, which was addressed to the Oyo State Attorney General, Prof. Oyelowo Oyewo, Malami drew Makinde’s attention to past decisions of the Supreme Court on the issue and advised him to reverse the dissolution.
But rather than heed the AGF’s advice, Makinde queried Malami’s jurisdictional competence, claiming, among others, that the issue was internal to Oyo State.