BREAKING: Supreme Court reinstates sacked Oyo elected LG Chairmen, Councillors

The Supreme Court sitting in Abuja, the nation’s capital, has ordered reinstatement of chairmen and councillors of the 33 local government councils in the Oyo state.

The elected council officials were sacked by the Oyo State governor, Seyi Makinde in 2019.

The Apex court declared the dissolution of local government councils in Oyo state as illegal.

In a ruling on Friday, the apex court said the replacement of the council chairmen with caretaker committees is also unlawful and fined Makinde’s administration N20 million.

The court said the dissolution of the council officials was very wrong and ordered Oyo State government to reinstate the sacked officials “immediately” but the tenures of the sacked council chairmen and councillors have expired .

Though, the court agreed that the tenures of the sacked council chairmen and councillors have expired, it ordered that all their outstanding salaries and allowances must be paid with immediate effect.

The Appex court said that any of the affected local government area without elected officials should not be funded with the federal allocation.

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The court said the governor had no right to “dissolve local government officials elected by the people.”

Few hours after his inauguration as governor in 2019, Mr Makinde sacked the officials who were elected in 2018.

He told them to hand over the property of their councils to the most senior staffer in their respective local government areas.

The officials, drawn from the 33 local government areas (LGAs) and 35 local council development areas (LCDAs) and their councillors, were members of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

They were elected during the tenure of the immediate past governor, late Abiola Ajimobi.

The officials were later replaced with caretaker chairmen and councillors who belong to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Following their removal, the sacked officials under the umbrella of the Association of Local Government of Nigeria (ALGON) under the leadership of Abass Aleshinloye, approached an Oyo State High Court in Ibadan.

They argued that they were illegally removed by Mr Makinde. The matter did not favour them and they went to appeal.

But, the appeal court in its ruling in July 2020 ruled in favour of Mr Makinde.

Again, the sacked officials went to Supreme Court and on Friday, the apex court ruled in their favour.

The Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Justice Abubakar Malami (SAN) had earlier directed the Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde to reverse himself over the dissolution of local government administration in the state.

The directive was contained in a letter to the Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice in Oyo State, Prof. Oyewo Oyelowo dated 14 January 2020.

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The letter, marked HAGF/OYO/2020/Vol.I/I, was entitled, “Unconstitutionality of dissolution of elected local government councils and appointment of caretaker committee: the urgent need for compliance with extant judicial decisions”.

The AGF said, in view of the decision of the Supreme Court on the matter that is binding on all 36 states of the Federation, “the common practice by some state governors in dissolving elected local government councils is unconstitutional, null and void.”

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