Governors Have No Powers To Dissolve LG Councils – Supreme Court

The Nigerian Supreme Court on Friday said state governors have no powers to dissolve democratically-elected local government councils in their states and replacing them with caretaker committees.

The apex court went as far as describing it as “executive recklessness”  It also nullified the provisions of the laws enacted by the states’ Houses of Assembly empowering governors to carry out such dissolution.

A five-man panel of the Supreme Court, led by Justice Olabode Rhodes-Vivour, made the pronouncements, among others, in a unanimous judgment it delivered on Friday in a case that arose from the dissolution of 16 local government councils in Ekiti State by the then Governor Kayode Fayemi.

Fayemi, now the Minister of Mineral Resources, was said to have announced the dissolution of the councils in a radio announcement on October 29, 2010, when the chairmen still had up till December 19, 2011, to complete their three-year tenure.

However, the Supreme Court held that Fayemi’s action was illegal. In the lead judgment, delivered by Justice Chima Nweze, it adopted an earlier order made by the Court of Appeal on the case in its judgment delivered on January 23, 2013 and directed the Ekiti State Government to compute and pay all the allowances and salaries accruable to members of the dissolved councils between October 29, 2010 and December 19, 2011, both dates inclusive.