October 22, (THEWILL) – The Federal Government has said there is no moratorium on the implementation of the Supreme Court judgement on local government financial autonomy.
Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, made the clarification while addressing newsmen after he was honoured with an honorary degree during the 12th convocation ceremony and 15th Founder’s Day Event of the Afe Babalola University Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD).
The Supreme Court had in a judgement 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.
Speaking of the delay in the full implementation of the apex court verdict, Fagbemi warned states not to commit contempt of court by disobeying the verdict.
Stressing that the administration of President Bola Tinubu was determined to ensure all duly constituted and elected local government administrators received their allocations directly from the federation account, the AGF refuted reports that a three-month moratorium was agreed to before the implementation of the apex court judgement.
His words: “Unfortunately, I know it has been in the media that they gave them (the governors) a three-month moratorium, which is not the position.
“The position is that yes, the judgement was delivered, but we felt that there is a need to put some things in place before the full implementation. That it is going to be implemented is sacrosanct; nobody can run away from it.
“The question is, there are some things we need to put in place such that we will not run into problems when we start the full implementation of the judgement of the Supreme Court. There is no moratorium; moratorium for what? You know that before now some states have slated their local government elections for beyond October.
“What we want to look at is: are they genuine when they said they are fixing the election beyond October? When did they first moot the idea? What is the law of their state, however imperfect it may be?
“What does the law of the state say? For instance, in the conduct of elections in some states, they will give 6 months’ notice. If they don’t do that, we know that no matter the kind of election you conduct, the court will nullify it. If we now say we just want to go the whole way out, then there will be a problem.
“We don’t want to go back to square one; that is why we are treading cautiously; otherwise, I am saying categorically that there is no moratorium for anybody. I know that one or two states are trying to commit contempt of court. I won’t comment until they actually do the enactment to see where it takes us and where we are going.
“Are they going to rewrite the judgement of the Supreme Court? When we get the full tenure of their law, we will take appropriate action.”
