How Oyo will pay N3.7bn needless debt through illegal sacking of LG councils

 Following last Friday’s Supreme Court judgement that ordered Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State to pay salaries and allowances of the sacked elected local government councils for the remaining two years of their tenure, the state has been plunged into over N3 billion needless debt.

The apex court’s judgement implied that the Oyo State Government will pay the salaries and allowances of 68 chairmen, 68 vice chairmen and 610 councilors who the court said were illegally relieved of their jobs after being democratically elected.

According to salaryscale.com, each of the 68 chairmen is entitled to N3,181,611 salaries and allowances per annum while each vice chairman is also entitled to N2,803,392 in salaries and allowances. Each of the councilors is entitled to N2.4 million per annum. The above does not cover severance package.

A rough estimate of the debt, which the Supreme Court ordered the governor to pay by August 7, indicates that while chairmen will rake in average of N432.6 million, vice chairmen will receive N381.2 million. The over 600 councillors will receive N2.9 billion, bringing the total rough estimate to N3.7 billion.

Speaking on the judgement, the outgoing chairman of Association of Local Government of Nigeria (ALGON) in the state, Ayodeji Abass-Aleshinloye, said the Supreme Court judgement has confirmed the chairmen’s position that Makinde was corrupt and lacks respect for rule of law.

He said: “ We are happy with the judgement and it affirmed what we have been saying that this government (of Seyi Makinde) has no respect for rule of law.

“It also shows his( Makinde) recklessness and corrupt act because we have been saying that the illegal arrangement of appointing caretaker committee members was wrong. He has been paying them the same money we will collect again. Oyo State is the one losing.”

The chairmen, vice chairmen and councilors took office on May 14, 2018. They are of the All Progressives Congress (APC), but the governor, who is of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), within hours of his swearing-in on May 29, 2019, sacked them by a fiat, saying their election violated the constitution.

The sacked council members, however, approached the state high court to upturn their removal which they posited violated a subsisting high court judgement obtained on May 6, 2019. The judgement had restrained the governor and the House of Assembly from dissolving the councils since they were democratically elected.

It also restrained the state electoral commission from conducting another election before the expiration of their tenure on May 14, 2021.

The judgement added that it also took its strength from a Supreme Court judgement which declared that governors and houses of assembly have no power to sack democratically elected officials at the local government level.

While the case went to the Appeal Court last year, Governor Makinde had opted for an out-of-court settlement. He offered the sacked council members full payment of their salaries and other entitlements as a compensation but they rejected the offer, insisting that the only acceptable condition for settlement was for the governor to reinstate them. They also posited that it would amount to corruption to get paid for a job undone, and not ordered by the court.

They insisted that the litigation was to strengthen democracy at the grassroots level, noting that it is not about money. They argued that since a president can not remove an elected governor, there was nowhere in the constitution where governors are allowed to sack elected council officials.

Meanwhile, the state chapter of Peoples Democratic Party has chided the APC over its celebration on the judgement, saying it only got what the governor had earlier offered them.