Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State, on Monday, has criticized the Federal Government for dragging the state to court alongside 35 other states over Local Government (LG) autonomy.
According to him, Lagos State already fully complies with LG autonomy and should not be part of the legal action.
Recall that the Federal Government filed a suit at the Supreme Court against all 36 state governors, seeking to prevent the arbitrary dissolution of democratically elected LG leaders.
However, Sanwo-Olu argued that including Lagos in the lawsuit was a legal error since the state’s local governments have been enjoying autonomy for decades.
Speaking at the ongoing Justice Reform Summit organized by the Lagos State Judiciary, Sanwo-Olu supported the suit but highlighted that the Attorney General of the Federation should have identified non-compliant states before initiating legal proceedings.
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He suggested that only states violating autonomy should be sued rather than all 36 states collectively.
“It is interesting to read that the Honorable Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation has sued all the 36 states because Governors did not give autonomy to the third tier of government. The only mistake I am going to tell our Attorney General is that some of us are in compliance.
“The Attorney General should have done his due diligence to identify which states are not compliant, so we don’t sue all the 36 states together. You can determine which states are not violating the Constitution. If it is three, four or five states that comply, then you can sue the 31 states for violating the autonomy of the local governments. That is part of the back work that we need to do,” he said.
