The Senate on Wednesday urged state and local governments to immediately comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling, specifically regarding local government accounts and the direct allocation of funds to them.
The Senate also resolved to take prompt action to amend sections of the Constitution to grant full autonomy to local government administrations across the country.
These resolutions were announced by Deputy Senate President, Senator Jibrin Barau, after lawmakers reconvened from a closed-door session where they discussed attempts by some state governments to bypass the Supreme Court’s July 11 ruling.
The discussion followed a motion raised by Senator Tony Nwoye, emphasizing the urgent need to stop state governments from using their Houses of Assembly to pass laws that violate constitutional provisions and the Supreme Court judgment, which mandates financial autonomy for local governments.
The motion, co-sponsored by 12 other senators, highlighted concerns about state governments’ alleged efforts to undermine the ruling through counter-legislation from their respective state assemblies.
The motion says, “Further concerned that the modus Operandi of subverting this financial autonomy of Local governments by state governments through their houses of assembly is to insert clauses in their laws requiring the Local Governments upon receipt of their allocation from Federation Account to remit all or majority or substantial portion of their allocation to a dedicated account which the State Governments will keep, control, manage or disburse for them using some nomenclatures like state/LGA joint account, state/LGA Consolidated revenue account, Local Government Joint Security Trust account etc.”
Senator Tony Nwoye alleged that some state governors are currently using their Houses of Assembly to pass laws that would require local government councils to remit funds into State/Local Government Joint Accounts, despite the Supreme Court ruling against this practice.
In July, the Supreme Court declared that it is unconstitutional for state governors to withhold funds allocated to Local Government administrations. The court also ruled that governors do not have the authority to dissolve democratically elected Local Government councils.
In a landmark judgment, the Supreme Court stated that such actions would violate the provisions of the 1999 Constitution.