Nigerian Governors React To Supreme Court Ruling On LG Autonomy

Oluwatobi OdeyinkaJuly 12, 20242 Mins read152

The Nigerian Governors Forum has reacted to the Supreme Court Ruling, which grants financial autonomy to Local Government Areas and prevents state governors from appointing caretakers as replacements for elected local government executives.

The forum, which had protested against local government autonomy for years, has now welcomed the latest ruling by the apex court.

The Chairman of the forum and governor of Kwara State, AbdulRazaq AbdulRahman, said governors have been relieved of a burden by the ruling. He added that governors had been bailing out local government areas with state funds.

Governor AbdulRahman said this on Friday while addressing state house correspondents after a closed-door meeting with President Bola Tinubu in the Presidential Villa.

He said: “We welcome the ruling of the Supreme, and our Attorney Generals have applied for the enrollment order, which we’ll study carefully.”

But by and large, governors are happy with the devolution of power regarding local government autonomy. It relieves the burden on governors. Our people don’t know how much states spend in bailing out local governments, and that’s the issue there.

Recall that the 36 governors sued former President Muhammadu Buhari after the latter granted financial autonomy to the local government through an executive order. The Supreme Court ruled in favour of the governors in 2022.

The Tinubu-led administration, in May 2024, dragged the 36 governors to the Supreme Court over the same issue, accusing the governors of abuse of office. On Thursday, July 11, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of FG.

The judgment, which was given by a seven-member panel led by Justice Emmanuel Agim, ruled that the local government councils should receive their allocations directly from the Accountant-General of the Federal Government of Nigeria.

Although many commentators believe that the judgment would not sit well with the governors, the NGF Chairman stated that they were comfortable with the Supreme Court judgment.

The Kwara governor noted that the NGF had requested for the enrollment of the judgment and would be reviewing it to decide the way forward.

“The forum will meet next Wednesday to look at the issue wholly and then come up with a resolution on that.”

“Like I said, we haven’t seen the enrollment of the court order, and so we really don’t know what is in there,” he stated.

Earlier, the Adamawa State Government asked the Supreme Court to interpret Sections 162 (1), (2), and (3) of the 1999 Constitution about its ruling on Local Government autonomy. This request is in protest of the verdict.