Sacking LG Chairmen Tantamount To Treason, AGF Warns Govs

The Federal Government has further reiterated the illegality of sacking elected local gov­ernment chairmen and their deputies by state governors, de­scribing the action as unconsti­tutional and treasonable offence.

Attorney-General of the Fed­eration (AGF) and Minister for Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, who de­clared this position on Wednes­day in Abuja, said such action, henceforth must be treated as treason.

The AGF position came amid recent violence in Osun State over the leadership of local gov­ernment councils.

Also in Edo State, Governor Monday Okpebholo suspended all the council chairmen and their deputies over alleged fail­ure of the council chairmen to submit yearly stewardship to the state government.

The Supreme Court had in a judgment delivered by a sev­en-man panel of justices led by Justice Garba Lawal on July 11, 2024, directed that Nigeria’s 774 Local Governments be granted full financial autonomy.

The court also barred gover­nors from dissolving democrat­ically elected council officials in the country, saying it would amount to a breach of the 1999 constitution.

Speaking on Wednesday, at the opening ceremony of an event organised by the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), the AGF, represented by Tijani Gazali, Di­rector of Civil Appeals at the Fed­eral Ministry of Justice, accused governors and state Assemblies of acting in defiance of the con­stitution and a Supreme Court ruling that prohibits their inter­ference in LGAs.

“It is unfortunate that over the last few decades in Nigeria, in plain contradiction of the constitutional mandates of state governments, local gov­ernments have now seen a great decline as they are nothing but a mere appendage of the state gov­ernments, merely existing as a means of supplying extra funds for the state governments.

“The most unfortunate of the decline is the unconstitutional connivance by state governors and their state Houses of Assem­blies to willing democratically elected local government struc­tures without recourse to the rule of law and replacing them with their candidates.

“Local government struc­tures had almost become extinct in Nigeria and that necessitated the action taken by President Bola Tinubu to immediately intervene through the filing of a suit in the Supreme Court in 2024.

“Despite the judgment of the Supreme Court outlawing the illegal removal of democrati­cally elected local government councils by state governors, few states have continued to carry on with this illegality. This act is tantamount to treason and must be treated as such”, he declared.