Afenifere, a pan-Yoruba socio-political association, has condemned the Supreme Court’s ruling that gave Nigeria’s local governments complete financial autonomy. The state governors’ ability to retain monies designated for local government administrations was ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court on Thursday.
The court further ruled that a local government council may only be recognized in conjunction with a democratically elected government, and that a state government lacks the authority to designate a caretaker committee.
Afenifere referred to the ruling of the supreme court as a mere judicial conspiracy in a statement released on Saturday by its leader and National Public Secretary, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, and Prince Justice Faloye.
The group said that the ruling went against the idea of true federalism and that the Supreme Court had played to the gallery in issuing it. The statement was headed “Tinubu and the grand conspiracy against democracy and true federalism in Nigeria.”
The statement read: “Afenifere sees the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Federal Government’s case regarding so-called local government autonomy as a judicial plot orchestrated by the Tinubu administration against the Nigerian state and its fundamental federalist ideals.
“Rather than interpret the constitution to uphold its elementary but overriding federal principle which recognises only a two-tier federal structure of the central government and federating states, the Supreme Court played to the gallery and wittingly allowed itself a most retrogressive declaration that the power of the government is portioned into three arms of government, the federal, the state and the local government.
“For the avoidance of any doubt, Afenifere makes bold to say that in line with its negotiated basis of existence, Nigeria is a ‘Federation consisting of States and a Federal Capital Territory’. as affirmed by Section 2 (2) of the 1999 constitution. While Afenifere frowns at corruption and misuse of public funds at levels of government, it condemns in most unmistaken terms the subjugation of the states and their constitutional roles including the local government system to the whims and caprices of the federal government by any means including obvious manipulation of the federation account as in the present case.”
The organization further claimed that some of Tinubu’s policies since the beginning have been implemented under a unitary system. It argued that true federalism was the only path ahead for the nation.
“It is becoming stridently eloquent that with just over a year of its inauguration, the Tinubu government, more than even the military administrations, is uncannily determined to unitarise the Nigerian Federation.
“Part of the unitary package is the creation of the Ministry of Livestock Development which is the audacious euphemism for the re-introduction of cattle colony, RUGA and those other policies by which the Buhari administration sought to appropriate lands in the states contrary to the provisions of the Land Use Act and the Constitution which vest land in the state in the Governor in trust for the people.
“Afenifere insists that the way forward for Nigeria is not the confusing rudderless tinkering but a holistic restructuring of the polity to re-enact the fundamental principles of true federalism as agreed by the founding fathers. This includes the fact that the local government system is an exclusive preserve of the states, either by direct constitutional provisions or residual powers in a federation,” the group submitted.
