Hon. Ayodeji Abass-Aleshinloye, former Chairman, Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON) in Oyo State, says freezing the state account over the unpaid N3.5 billion entitlements of sacked council chairmen was their last option.
Justice A.O. Ebong of an Abuja Federal High Court had, on Dec. 15, issued an order attaching the accounts of the state government in 10 commercial banks in the country.
Ebong gave the order while ruling on a garnishee proceeding initiated by the local government chairmen sacked on May 29, 2019 by Gov. Seyi Makinde.
NAN reports that the former council chairmen and councilors had, in 2021, got a N4,874,889,425 judgment against Makinde and other officials/agencies of the state.
Reacting to the judgment, Abass-Aleshinloye said it was unfortunate that 27 out of their members who took the government to court had died in the course of pursuing their entitlements.
He attributed their death to lack of money to take care of their health challenges, adding that their passing away was avoidable.
“We got a judgment that the state government should pay us our entitlements but they refused to pay at that time and were just wasting our time.
“The lesson from this judgment is that government must always allow the rule of law to thrive; there should be less of arrogance on the part of the executives, especially when it comes to legal issues,” he said.
Abass-Aleshinloye, who was Chairman of Oluyole Local Government Council, expressed sadness over situations where Supreme Court judgments were being disobeyed with impunity.
“We got a judgment at the supreme court, only for it not to be obeyed. It is very unfortunate that we have to go to court to freeze government accounts,” he said.
The former ALGON chairman called on other state governments to learn from this development and shun the habit of sacking democratically-elected council chairmen and councillors in order to avoid this type of development.
