Senator representing Kano Central Senatorial District on Tuesday said the consequences of postponing Kano State Local Government Areas election were better imagined than experienced.
According to Hanga, Kano would have been thrown into financial crises as the federal government would have stopped allocation meant for LG.
Read also: Tension in Kano as court sacks all NNPP candidates few hours to LG polls
Speaking to members of NASS New Media Forum, the senator said, “after 30th of this month, nobody will give a Kobo to Kano.”
Supreme Court’s Verdict
The Supreme Court on 11th of June, 2024, had passed a landmark judgement mandating the federal government to only grant allocation to only local government with duly elected council chairmen.
The Supreme Court said “only democratically elected local government councils” are to be funded from the federation’s purse.
In the judgement, the justices used a “progressive interpretation of the law” to strike out Section 162(6) of the 1999 Constitution.
“It is the position of this court that the federation can pay local governments’ allocations directly to the local governments or through the states. In this case, since paying them through the states has not worked, justice demands that local governments’ allocations from the Federation Account should henceforth be paid directly to the local governments,” Emmanuel Agim, a justice of the court, declared.
Implementation on States
In compliance with the directives of the Supreme court the federal government will stop funds allocation to to all LGA in breach of the directives.
In June of 2024, the 44 local government in Kano got ₦152.3 billion naira form Federal Account Allocation Committee (FAAC).
This whooping sum would have been stopped if the state had postponed it’s election.
Kano State Governor Intervention
Senator Hanga maintained that the proactive action of the party and the government averted the disaster.
On the alleged breached of court orders, Senator Hanga said the government got a contrary judgement asking the government to proceed with the election.
He said, “we went to the High Court, and the High Court gave us the go-ahead to conduct the election.
Addressing the disqualification of official of KANSIEC, he said, “the disqualification of the chairman and secretary of the Kano State Independent Electoral Commission KANSIEC does not warrant stopping us from conducting the election because chairman is only chairman, there is a secretary, there are also commissioners.
“If, for instance, God forbid, the chairman and secretary are in the same car and they had an accident and died automatically – what would you expect, do we postpone the election, when we have a deadline to do the election before 30th. The commissioners are there available, and somebody will have to sit in for them. Somebody will act.”
The New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP) on Saturday won all the chairmanship and counsellorship seat in the LGA election conducted by KANSIEC
