Court Blocks Oyo State Govt.’s Accounts In Four Banks Over N3.4bn Debt

Makinde sacked the Chairmen and Councillors on May 29, 2019 and subsequently appealed the judgment.

The Court of Appeal, in its judgment on July 15, 2020 set aside the judgment of the High Court, a decision the affected Chairmen and Councillors appealed at the Supreme Court.

In its judgment on May 7, 2021 a five-member panel of the apex court, presided over by Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, allowed the appeal marked: SC/CV/556/2020 and set aside the decision of the Court of Appeal.

The apex court, which awarded a cost of N20 million against Makinde, ordered that the ex-Chairmen and Councillors, who were unlawfully sacked by the governor, be paid their salaries and allowances from May 29, 2019 to May 11, 2021 when their tenure ought to have expired.

In the lead judgment by Justice Ejembi Eko, the Supreme Court came down hard on Makinde, who it found, acted arbitrarily and undemocratic.

Justice Eko said: “I will not conclude this appeal without commenting on the disturbing ugly face of impunity displayed by the Governor of Oyo State (1st respondent herein) on 29th May, 2019, tantamounting to executive lawlessness, outrightly and vehemently condemned by this court in the case of the Military Governor of Lagos State v. Ojukwu.”

He noted that, even before appealing the High Court judgment, Makinde on May 29, 2019 “issued imperial directives dissolving all democratically elected local Government Councils in Oyo State in spite of the subsisting judgment of Oyo State High Court in the suit No. 1/347/2017.

“Series of applications were filed by the judgment creditors, the present appellants, to restrain, particularly the 1st respondent (the Governor), from embarking on the self-help designed to contemptuously frustrate the judgment of the High Court.
“He was not dissuaded.

He proceeded in his imperial omnipotency to continue in his untrammelled, albeit invidious contemptuous, disregard of subsisting judgment of the High Court.

“It is unthinkable that a democratically elected governor would embark on these unwholesome undemocratic tendencies. These tendencies no doubt endanger democracy and the rule of law.

“It is almost becoming universal phenomena that the democratically elected Governors have constituted themselves into a specie most dangerous to democracy in this country.

They disdainfully disregard and disrupt democratically elected Local Government Councils and appoint their lackeys as caretaker committee’s to run affairs of Local Governments,” Justice Eko said.
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