On Matters of Local Government Autonomy: Court Decides Fate of State Governors

Recall that, the attorney of the federation and minister of justice- Lateef  Fagbemi  initiated legal actions  against the 36 states in Nigeria over the allocation of funds and the autonomy of the local governments.

While the minister of justice, representing the federal government in the suit and seeking local government autonomy as the third tier of government has asked the apex court to involve the constitution to declare that the government and state house of assembly are under obligation to ensure democratically elected systems at the third tier.

On the other end, the state governors as represented by their lawyers are opposing the suit and praying that the federal Supreme Court will dismiss it.

 In support, the president of the national union of local government   employees –NULGE (Hakeem Ambali) said it will hold a national day of praying and fasting   towards victory for the local government.

Highlights of the verdict of the supreme court today.

A seven panel member  of the court presided by Justice Garba Lawal gave its verdict on the autonomy of the local government .The state governments were faulted by the supreme court for exploiting the 774  local government areas for decades.  Hence, 20.6% of the federation account allocation must be directly paid to local governments accounts for their development.

Thus, the issue to stop the governors of the 36 states from tampering with the 20.6 % allocation of the local government   has been addressed among other reliefs as the federal government gets 52. 68% while the  state receives 26.72%   of allocation.