The Katsina State government has announced the commencement of the payment of entitlements of the 34 sacked elected local government chairmen and 361 councillors, in compliance with a recent Supreme Court directive.
Governor Aminu Bello Masari, who made the above disclosure in a chat with reporters at the Government House Katsina said the state will pay off the outstanding entitlements as ordered by the court
The Nation recalled that the apex court, in a unanimous judgment delivered by Justice Adamu Jauro, on May 7 directed that the dissolved council officials are paid all their entitlements from the date of their illegal dissolution to the date they were to vacate office.
It also ruled that the sacking of the elected local government Chairmen and the councillors who were elected on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and their replacement by caretaker committees by Masari in 2015, was unlawful, unconstitutional and illegal.
The controversy over the rightful leadership of the 34 local government councils and 361 wards moved from one court to another and finally to the Supreme Court in Abuja.
In a related development, Governor Masari has disclosed that it had commenced the process of conducting Council election in the state, noting that the State Independent Electoral Commission (SIEC) is being repositioned preparatory for the LG elections.
Masari also repeated that the state government is 70 per cent ready to conduct the LG polls in all the 34 local councils in the state.
He said: “We are 70 per cent ready for the conduct of the local government election in all the 34 local councils in the state, we have rehabilitated the Katsina State Independent Electoral Commission, KASIEC and purchased new vehicles to ease their work’’.
‘’We also bought all the needed electoral equipment for the conduct of the elections. What is left for us now is to fix a date for the election because it is after we fix the date that we can print bailout papers”.
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