The Supreme Court on Friday voided laws enacted by the states’ Houses of Assembly which allow governors to sack elected chairmen of local governments and councillors and replace them with appointed administrators, according to reports.
It has become a tradition among governors to dissolve the Executive Councils of the states’ LGs and replace them with their appointees, who they call caretaker committees. In a unanimous judgement of five Justices of the Supreme Court described the practice as “executive recklessness”, which must not be allowed to persist.
The judgment by the five-man panel, led by Justice Olabode Rhodes-Vivour was on the appeal in relation to the dissolution of the 16 Local Government Executives in Ekiti State, during Kayode Fayemi’s tenure. The appeal marked: SC/120/2013 was filed by the Ekiti State Government.
It had Prince Sanmi Olubunmi (Chairman of Ido Osi LG and Chairman of Association of Local Governments of Nigeria – ALGON, Ekiti Chapter and 13 others as respondents. Fayemi, (then) Minister of Mineral Resources reportedly announced the dissolution of the councils in a radio announcement on October 29, 2010, when the elected council officials still had up till December 19, 2011, to end their three-year tenure. The Supreme Court, in faulting the law purportedly relied on by Fayemi, held that Section 23(b) of the Ekiti State Local Government Administration (Amendment) Law, 2001, which empowered the governor to dissolve local government councils, whose tenure was yet to expire, violated section 7(1) of the Constitution from which the state House of Assembly derived the power to enact the local government law. Justice Centus Nweze, in the lead judgment, said: “There can be no doubt, as argued by the appellants’ counsel, that the Ekiti State House of Assembly is empowered to make laws of Ekiti State.
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