One day, while coming back from the viewing center, my friend and I had a discourse on power and dominance. His team – Arsenal – had just been annihilated by the clinical Manchester City. Perhaps this prompted him to assert that the world is structured in a way where the powerful ones prey on the feeble.
With disappointment in his voice, he gave examples of how, during pre-independence, the white victimised the blacks. How men abuse women and how women in turn now prey on children. He ended by saying everyone was just searching for who to assert dominance over.
While I didn’t totally agree with his submissions, I wouldn’t deny the fact that the world is structured in a binary form of powerful and less powerful. In today’s article, we would discuss how this idea reflects in law between the state and local governments in Nigeria.
By virtue of section 2(2) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Nigeria operates a federal system of government comprising the federal, state, and local governments. Over time, people consider the federal and state government as the “big boys” and the local governments as those who want to “bambam” with the big boys. In other words, the state government is considered more powerful than the local government.
With this background, the question then becomes whether or not the state governments in Nigeria can validly and legally remove the elected governing council of a local government? This issue, recently, came up for determination in Governor Ekiti State & Ors v Olubunmo & Ors (2016) LPELR-48040(SC).
Succinctly, the fact of the case goes thus: The respondents were elected into the Local Government Councils in Ekiti State. Their tenure was for three years, that is from 20 December 2008 to 19 December 2011. On 29 October 2010, the appellants, pursuant to section 23B of the Ekiti State Local Government Administration (Amendments) Law, 2001, by a radio announcement, dissolved the Local Government Councils and removed the respondents, and appointed unelected caretaker committees in their place. Outraged by this action, the respondents challenged the dissolution of the councils in the court.
On appeal and further appeal, the Supreme held that the action of the appellant was unconstitutional. In reaching this decision, attention was given to both statutory and judicial authorities.
Firstly, section 23B of the Ekiti State Local Government Administration (Amendments) Law, 2001 states that “the Governor is by this law empowered to dissolve Local Government Councils for overriding public interest subject to the two-thirds majority approval of members of the House of Assembly”.
Moving on, section 7(1) of the Constitution states that “the system of local government by democratically elected local government councils is under this Constitution guaranteed; and accordingly, the Government of every State shall, subject to section 8 of this Constitution, ensure their existence under a Law which provides for the establishment, structure, composition, finance, and functions of such councils.”
Put differently, the Constitution intends to vouchsafe the inviolability of the sacred mandate which the electorate, at that level, democratically donated to the Local government council. As such, it is obvious from the Constitution that section 7(1) thereof guarantees democratically-elected Local Government Councils throughout Nigeria by establishing their existence. See Eze & Ors. v. Governor, Abia State & Ors. (2014) 14 NWLR (Pt. 1426) 192.
In Nigeria, it is indubitably an elementary position that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land and any law which is contrary to the provision of the constitution is null and void. See section 1(1) & (3) of the Constitution and Amadi v. INEC (2012) All FWLR (Pt. 621) 1415. As such, since the provision of Ekiti State Local Government Administration (Amendments) Law, 2001 ran contrary to the provision of the Constitution, the former became null and void. Attorney-General, Abia State v. Attorney-General, Federation (2007) 1 CCLR 104.
On judicial authority, the supreme was influenced by an earlier precedent set in Attorney-General Plateau State v. Goyol (2007) 16 NWLR (Pt. 1059), where the court held that: “the Governor swore to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and not to mutilate it. Although the House of Assembly has the power to make laws, (it) has no power to make any law by giving the Governor power to truncate a democratically-elected Local Government Council. The penchant by State Governors in dissolving Local Government Councils is clearly undemocratic. It is only when a state of emergency has been declared that can warrant the suspension of democratic institutions in the polity.
Furthermore, the elected governing councils could only be removed if found to be in breach of the rules governing the office as held in Eze v. Governor, Abia State (supra), or by proof that it was in the overriding public interest. These were not shown in the case under review as the appellants failed to demonstrate these facts. The supreme then held that the removal was unconstitutional and that the respondents’ entitlements be paid.
In conclusion, the supreme court judgment reaffirmed the importance of the governing council of the local governments by not portraying them as ‘weak’ and further sets an example to prevent the discretionary exercise of any governor’s power who may want to remove these democratically elected individuals without a just cause.
Thank you for reading. See you next week.
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