‘A relief of financial burden to state governments’ — NGF reacts to supreme court judgement on LG autonomy

• In May, the federal government filed a suit at the supreme court against the governors of the 36 states, seeking full autonomy for the country’s 774 local governments.
• On July 11, the supreme court ruled that the federal government should henceforth pay allocations directly to local government councils from the federation account.

AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF), has said that the ruling of the supreme court affirming the fiscal autonomy of LGAs is a relief from the financial burden to state governments.

Abdulrazaq, who is also the governor of Kwara, assured total compliance of the apex court ruling by other state governors.

Speaking to journalists after meeting with President Bola Tinubu, Abdulrazaq said the governors are “happy with the devolution of power in respect to local government autonomy”.

The Kwara governor, who was flanked by Hope Uzodinma and Bala Mohammed, governors of Imo and Bauchi, said that the public “really don’t know how much states expense in bailing out local governments.”

When asked for his reaction to the apex court’s judgement, the NGF chair said: “We welcome the ruling of the Supreme Court, compliance is a given and our Attorney Generals have applied for the enrollment order, which we’ll study carefully.

He added that “the forum will meet next Wednesday, to look at the issue wholly and then come up with a resolution on that.

“Like I said, we haven’t seen the enrollment of the court order and so we really don’t know what is in there,” he said.

Speaking on the implications for states that do not have elected local government councils, the NGF chairman said as for Kwara in particular, the judgment will not negatively affect it as the state government has not been tampering with council funds.

“It’s not going to affect the state we’ve never tampered with local government funds. So it’s going to continue.

“What the local governments have to do is to manage themselves, especially with the oncoming minimum wage, to manage their affairs and make sure salaries are paid, traditional rulers get their 5% and those are the main issues.