The Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Prince Lateef Fagbemi, has declared that nobody gave the 36 state governments any three-month moratorium before the implementation of the Supreme Court judgement on the autonomy of local governments.

Fagbemi, who spoke with newsmen in Ado Ekiti on Tuesday, said that while the implementation of the judgement remains sacrosanct, some things must be put in place before the full implementation so that it would not run into problems.

Fagbemi, who was honoured with an honorary degree during the 12th convocation ceremony of the Afe Babalola University Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD), said there is no going back on the implementation of the judgement for the 774 local government areas (LGAs) to be given financial autonomy in order to ensure development at the grassroots level.

He warned states not to commit contempt of court by disobeying the verdict of the Supreme Court, adding 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.

Fagbemi said, “Unfortunately, I know it has been in the media that they gave them (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 so 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 say 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?

Continuing, the AGF said: “What does the law of the state say? For instance, in the conduct of elections in some states, they will give six 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 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.”