Suspension: LG Vice Chairmen, Councillors drag Kwara govt to court

By Steve Oni, Ilorin

Suspended local government Vice Chairmen and Councillors in Kwara state have headed to court to seek judicial redress in order to get their jobs back as elected officials of their respective Councils.

This action, they said, was as a result of another six months suspension slammed on them by Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq on December 17 after the expiration of the first six months’ suspension, coupled with the order by the state government stopping the half salary they were collecting in the first six months of their suspension.

They argued that investigations carried out by the state government in the past six months only indicted the 16 local government Chairmen, and not the Vice Chairmen or the Councillors.

They said: “Nothing was found against the Hon. Speakers that were invited. The Vice Chairmen and Councillors were not invited for questioning, yet they were left on suspension. We know, and we know that government knows too, that the Vice Chairmen and Councillors did not perpetrate any fraud in the Councils. Why then is government preventing elected officers from doing their jobs and from collecting their entitlements?

“Ordinarily, in the absence of the Chairmen who have been accused of wrong doing, the Vice Chairmen should,under the law, take charge. But the governor did not allow this, placing the Vice Chairmen on suspension for no reason or just cause.”

Addressing a crowded press conference on Monday at the NUJ Press Centre, Ilorin, the state capital, spokesperson of the group, Hon. Yusuf Salihu Mohammed, who was the suspended Vice Chairman of Ilorin West local government, lamented that all executive and legislative functions in the16 local governments have been paralysed by the action, saying since there was no provision for vacuum, “then, somebody must have been illegally playing the role of Sole Administrator in the unclosed offices of the respective officers.”

Commending security agencies, particularly the DSS, for their humane and mature way they had intervened in the matter, they assured them that “we will not do anything illegal in this struggle.” To their constituents, they also assured them that they would ensure that their right to representation was not truncated, adding that they would do everything lawful to ensure that “our rights are restored and democracy is advanced in Kwara state.”

They appealed to traditional rulers, religious leaders and all people of conscience to “persuade Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq not to use his executive power to deny Kwara state of good democracy and fellow Kwarans of their legitimate rights,” pointing out that the case in court “can be amicably settled if the governor respects the rule of law and does the needful in this circumstance.”


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