Supreme Court Strips Governors of Power to Sack Local Government Officials

A ruling by the Supreme Court has made it impossible for State Governors to ever sack or dissolve democratically-elected local government councils.

The Supreme Court on Friday stripped Governors of the power to sack local government chairmen. It described it as “executive recklessness” to rampantly dissolve democratically-elected local government councils in their states and replacing them with caretaker committees.
The apex court ruled that the provisions of the laws enacted by the states’ Houses of Assembly empowering governors to carry out such dissolution and replace them with caretaker committees was null and void.
This was the decision reached by a five-man panel of the apex court led by Justice Olabode Rhodes-Vivour on Friday.
The appeal in which the Supreme Court made the pronouncements arose from the dissolution of 16 local government councils in Ekiti State by the then Governor Kayode Fayemi.
Fayemi, who is now the Minister of Mineral Resources, was said to have announced the dissolution of the councils in a radio announcement on October 29, 2010, when the chairmen still had up till December 19, 2011, to complete their three-year tenure.
But in the lead judgment delivered by Justice Chima Nweze, the apex court condemned the decision of the then governor.
The apex court adopted an earlier order made by the Court of Appeal on the case in its judgment delivered on January 23, 2013, directing the Ekiti State Government to compute and pay all the allowances and salaries accruable to members of the dissolved councils between October 29, 2010 and December 19, 2011, both dates inclusive