• Warns against subversion of court rulings
• NULGE threatens strike over withheld councils’ funds
A Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Musibau Adetunbi, has raised the alarm over what he described as an unconstitutional decision by some Federal Government officials to divert local council funds in Osun State for the use of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Adetunbi, who led the legal team of the state in the various legal battles besetting the administration and control of local councils in Osun State between the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the APC, issued a statement, yesterday in Ibadan, calling for sanity and respect for the rule of law on the vexed issues.
He described as “politically motivated and unlawful” a recent directive by the Accountant-General of the Federation to the Central Bank of Nigeria to send statutory allocations of the councils to the APC State Secretariat in Osogbo instead of the official Ministry of Local Governments at the Osun State Government Secretariat at Abere, Osogbo.
He also urged the APC to stop using the levers of the power it has at the federal level to subvert the rule of law and twist clear judgments of the Court of Appeal, which he said, the APC lost.
The Senior Advocate explained in the statement that “it must be noted that even in the first judgment of the Court of Appeal that was delivered on February 10, 2025, in Appeal No: CA/AK/270/2022, prayer (G) in the Amended Notice of Appeal filed on January 12, 2023, specifically prayed an order restoring the appellants back into their offices having been duly elected by the citizens of Osun State, among others.
MEANWHILE, the Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) may embark on a national strike over the withheld councils’ funds in the state.
President-General of the NULGE, Aliyu Kankara, who stated this, yesterday, during a media briefing in Abuja over the issue, accused the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) of declining to respect the Supreme Court judgment on direct payment of council allocation to their respective accounts.
Kankara lamented that state actors had taken over council allocations in Osun State and created an atmosphere of discord, as well as throwing clogs in the wheel of progress.
He hinted that the NULGE is embarrassed by a surreptitious move to supplant extant law and place the running of the accounts of Osun State local councils in the hands of impostors who are not recognised by the law.
The NULGE chief, while calling the attention of President Bola Tinubu to the anomalies, urged him not to allow unscrupulous elements to rubbish his legacy.
