Agbakoba drags Finance minister to court over release of funds to ‘illegal’ LG bosses

Worried by the Federal Government’s move to pay trillions of naira to unelected local government council officials, Dr. Olisa Agbakoba (SAN), has dragged the Minister of Finance, Hajiya Zainab Ahmed, to court.

The human rights lawyer in a suit he filed at the Federal High Court, Lagos, wants the court to stop Mrs. Ahmed and the Nigerian Government from going ahead to pay the public funds to unelected local government officials.

Agbakoba, who argued that Section 7(1) of the 1999 constitution guarantees a system of democratically elected government councils, said many local government council officials in Nigeria are never elected and act unconstitutionally.

Based on that, he said allocating public funds to them amounts to the violation of the constitution, as there is collusion with state governments in the use of trillions of naira of public funds.

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He said, “The current situation where most of the 774 local governments are unelected is not only unconstitutional but meant no development at the local government level.”

The Senior Advocated further explained that the reason there is widespread corruption in Nigeria is because unelected persons that are not accountable to the electorate keep receiving public funds amounting to trillions of naira.

Recall that the federal government had only recently passed a law that barred state governments from accessing Local government funds.

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