The Supreme Court on Friday struck out a suit seeking to compel the Federal Government to release all allocations due to Local Government Councils (LGCs) in Osun State, which had been withheld.
A seven-member panel of the apex court, in a split decision of six to one, held that the legal action, brought before it by the Attorney General of Osun State, lacked competence.
In the lead judgment delivered by Justice Mohammed Idris, the court ruled that the Osun State government lacked locus standi (legal standing) to invoke the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court on behalf of the 30 LGCs in the state. The panel emphasized that the Supreme Court could only be approached as a court of first instance in disputes between any state of the federation and the Federal Government. It noted that the Osun LGCs are legally recognized autonomous entities that can sue or be sued.
Justice Idris added that the LGCs were the proper parties to challenge the Federal Government’s actions and that the apex court lacked the requisite jurisdiction to entertain the case. He also dismissed the argument by the Osun AG that the suit constituted public interest litigation.
Although the Supreme Court upheld a preliminary objection filed by the Attorney General of the Federation challenging the competence of the suit, it admonished the Federal Government to give full effect to its judgment granting fiscal autonomy to all 774 Local Government Areas in the country.
The suit, marked SC/CV/775/2025, sought ten reliefs, including declarations that the AGF is constitutionally obligated to enforce court decisions affirming the existence of democratically elected LGCs in Osun following the elections conducted on February 22, 2025. The state also asked the court to declare that the AGF cannot act arbitrarily by withholding statutory allocations or releasing them to candidates not legally in office.
The state further sought orders restraining the AGF from paying allocations to sacked All Progressives Congress (APC) local government chairmen and councillors pursuant to the nullified local government elections of October 15, 2022, and directing that withheld allocations be paid to the validly elected LGC officials.
During proceedings, counsel to the state, Musibau Adetunbi, SAN, told the Supreme Court that the AGF had, in a letter dated March 26, directed that the withheld allocations be released to APC officials who had already been removed from office by a court judgment. He added that the Federal Government attempted to release the funds through the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), but the state obtained an order to stop the release.
The Federal Government argued that no cause of action was established, claiming that the Osun State government was attempting to frustrate the APC LGC officials. Counsel to the AGF, Chief Akin Olujimi, SAN, asserted that the matter was not one for the Supreme Court, that the state lacked locus standi, and that the lawsuit constituted an abuse of the judicial process.