The Supreme Court of Nigeria has dismissed a legal action instituted by the Osun State Government seeking to compel the Federal Government of Nigeria to release funds belonging to the thirty Local Government Councils within the state. The apex court delivered the ruling on Friday in Abuja, Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory.
A seven-member panel of the Supreme Court, in a majority ratio of six to one, held that the suit filed before the court lacked the required legal foundation to be entertained. In its lead judgment presented by Justice Mohammed Idris, the court explained that the Attorney General of Osun State did not possess the competence to activate the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction in this matter.
Justice Idris stated clearly that the Supreme Court, when sitting as a court of first instance, is empowered to resolve disputes strictly between a state government and the Federal Government of Nigeria. He added that Local Government Councils, which are recognised in the Nigerian Constitution as autonomous entities, were the only legal parties qualified to initiate an action challenging the actions of the Federal Government regarding their allocated funds.
Okay News reports that the apex court dismissed the assertion of the Osun State Attorney General who argued that the matter qualified as public interest litigation. The court disagreed and maintained that this argument could not override the constitutional requirement on locus standi.
Although the Supreme Court upheld the preliminary objection earlier filed by the Attorney General of the Federation, the court used the opportunity to caution the Federal Government to strictly comply with the judgment that granted fiscal autonomy to all seven hundred and seventy-four Local Government Areas across Nigeria.
Osun State had approached the court seeking a series of declarations. Among them was a request for the court to pronounce that the Attorney General of the Federation lacked the power to disregard the existing judgments of the Federal High Court and the Court of Appeal, which prohibited the withholding of Local Government funds and the alleged directive to channel payments to former All Progressives Congress Local Government officials who had been removed from office.
Counsel to the Osun State Government, Musibau Adetunbi, Senior Advocate of Nigeria, informed the court that the Federal Government attempted to “destroy the res (subject matter) by attempting to pay the money to one of the contending parties,” noting that there was a subsisting court order restraining any such payments.
In a counterargument, the Federal Government stated that “no cause of action was established against it” by the Osun State Government. It further insisted that the state was attempting to block the interests of the former officials whose three-year term had ended, adding that “the plaintiff not only lacked the locus standi but was also involved in an abuse of the judicial process.”
More developments are expected as reactions continue to trail the judgment.
