Senior Advocate of Nigeria and Constitutional Legal Luminary, Chief Mike Ozekhome, has said Thursday’s Supreme Court judgement on confirming autonomy for local governments meant the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) would withhold funds to all councils supervised by unelected caretakers.
Ozekhome made the submission on Friday in an interview with Channels Television.
“The judgement of the government is clear. If you want to receive funds from the Federation account, then conduct an election. If what you have in place is a caretaker committee as Local Government Chairman, be sure that it will not have money from the Federation account. If you want money from the Federation account, such councils must be democratically elected,” he stated.
At the last count, the 20 states without elected council administrators are:
1. Rivers
2. Jigawa
3. Anambra
4. Zamfara
5. In Benue
6. Bauchi
7. Plateau
8. Abia
9. Enugu
10. Katsina
11. Kano
12. Sokoto
13. Yobe
14. Ondo
15. Osun
16. Delta
17. Akwa-Ibom
18. Cross River
19. Imo
20. Kwara
While the Supreme Court verdict endorsed full local government autonomy, it also ordered that funds from the Federation Account should be paid directly to LG accounts.
Also, the ruling forbade governors from dissolving democratically elected officials for local governments, saying the practice breached the 1999 Constitution.
