Seven years after the Supreme Court voided the law that allowed state governors to appoint caretaker chairmen in place of democratically elected ones for local government areas, at least 18 governors have continued to violate the ruling, Daily Trust on Sunday reports.
Findings by this newspaper revealed that 349 local government areas in 18 states across the country are being run by unelected officials. These unelected officials operate under different nomenclatures, such as caretaker chairmen, sole administrators and transition implementation committees.
The local government areas are in Abia, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Bauchi, Bayelsa, Benue, Cross River, Enugu, Gombe, Imo, Kogi, Kwara, Ondo, Osun, Plateau, Sokoto, Yobe and Zamfara states.
Kano and Kebbi states, whose elected council chairmen completed their tenures this month, also failed to conduct fresh elections before the tenures of the former chairmen elapsed.
Directors of Personnel Management are in charge of the affairs of the local government areas in the two states.
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The Supreme Court had, in a judgement delivered on December 9, 2016, voided laws enacted by state assemblies that empowered governors to replace democratically elected council chairmen and councillors with appointed administrators.
Also, the Senate had, on December 1, 2023, following a motion by Minority Leader Abba Moro, urged the federal government to stop the statutory allocation of funds to local government councils, whose chairpersons were not democratically elected.
But data from the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation showed that these states, in January this year, received a sum of N115,462,723,653.74 for their local government areas.
Read more: https://dailytrust.com/7-years-after-govs-still-violate-s-court-ruling-on-lgas/
