A human rights and constitutional lawyer, Professor Mike Ozekhome, SAN, has again insisted that the judgement of the Supreme Court, which ordered allocations of funds directly to the 774 local governments in Nigeria, is enforceable in all parts of the country.....KINDLY READ THE FULL STORY HERE▶
Ozekhome said, I’m a fresh statement made available to newsmen on Thursday that there was no ambiguity in the judgement to warrant any delay in its implementation and maintained that Section 162 of the 1999 Constitution, upon which the judgement was predicated, was rightly interpreted by the seven-member panel of Justices of the apex court.
According to the statement, “Many Nigerians and non-Nigerians alike have repeatedly asked me if the Supreme Court was not wrong in its interpretation of Section 162(3), (4), (5) and (6) of the 1999 Constitution and what happens to the allegedly wrong judgement.
“They want to know if the judgement is superior to the said “clear” provisions of the Constitution and if it is enforceable or capable of being enforced. They also want to know how, in the event that I say it is enforceable. My simple answers to both questions are yes, yes and yes.
“Let’s take them one after the other; the judgement of the Supreme Court is superior to the provisions of the Constitution. A law is only what the courts interpret it to be, not what it says on bare paper. That was why Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., a very influential civil rights Jurist, Brevet Colonel during the American Civil War and longest serving Justice of the US Supreme Court (1902–1922), who retired from the US Supreme Court at 90, once famously declared:
“The prophecies of what the courts will do in fact, and nothing more pretentious, are what I mean by the law”. In other words, the law, whether constitutional, substantive, statutory, or adjectival, remains what it is—inanimate and dead on paper—until life and the oxygen of interpretation are breathed into it by a court of law.
“Consequently, it is thus the interpretation that was given by the Supreme Court to the entire section 162 of the Constitution on the sharing procedure between the federal government, states, and LGs, and not the bare provisions of the Constitution, that prevails.
“On the enforceable nature of the judgement, the answer is also in the affirmative. Section 287(1) of the 1999 Constitution comes to our rescue by providing that “the decisions of the Supreme Court shall be enforced in any part of the Federation by all authorities and persons and by courts of subordinate jurisdiction to that of the Supreme Court.”
“Even if the Supreme Court was wrong in its interpretation of Section 162 dealing with the State Joint Local Government Account, the judgement remains binding on all and for all times.
“It is only an amendment of the Constitution under Section 9 thereof that can override the decision. No person or authority can decide, whimsically and arbitrarily, to disobey the judgement or pick and choose what portions of the judgement to obey or which to discard.
“In Rt Hon Michael Balonwu & Ors V Governor of Anambra State & Ors (2007) 5 NWLR (Pt 1028) 488, the intermediate court held that “an order of court, whether valid or not, must be obeyed until it is set aside.
“An order of court must be obeyed as long as it is subsisting by all, no matter how lowly or lightly placed in society. This is what the rule of law is all about; hence, the courts have always stressed the need for obedience to court orders.”
“Since no court is higher than the Supreme Court of Nigeria, only an amendment to the Constitution by the National Assembly (NASS) under Section 9 can override the judgement.
“On how the Supreme Court judgement is implementable, the answer is equally simple. The FG, states, and LGs should now meet (and I am told they have been meeting) at FAAC and decide on modalities and procedures for opening up accounts for LGs so that their allocation under Section 162 is paid directly to them and not to the joint state LG account that is oftentimes waylaid by state governors and fleeced without the helpless and hamstrung LGs being able to raise a finger.
“This is not rocket science.That refusal by state governors to remit to the LGs was the ugly mischief the Apex Court judgement sought to cure, and it did so perfectly, loud and clear, in my own humble opinion.
“Inter alia, the Apex Court had declared emphatically that, “by virtue of sections 162(3) and (5) of the Constitution of Nigeria, 1999, the amount standing to the credit of LGs in the Federation Account shall be distributed to them and be paid directly to them”; that “a state, either by itself or the Governor or other agencies, has no power to keep, control, manage, or disburse in any manner, allocations from the Federation Account to LGs.”
“The Apex Court also granted injunctive orders restraining “governments and their agents, officials, or privies from tampering with funds meant for the LGs in the Federation Account” and further ordered “immediate compliance by the states, through their appointed officials and public officers with the terms of the judgement and rders,” Ozekhome said.