Human rights activist and senior lawyer, Olisa Agbakoba, has filed a suit at the Federal High Court, Lagos against the Minister of Finance, Hajiya Zainab Ahmed, in order to stop the allocation of public funds running into trillions of naira to unelected local government council officials.
According to the senior lawyer, the basis of the case is that Section 7(1) of the 1999 constitution guarantees a system of democratically elected government councils.
Agbakoba argued that many local government council officials in Nigeria are never elected and act unconstitutionally.
He said allocation of public funds to them is a violation of the constitution, as there is collusion with state governments in the use of trillions of naira of public funds.
The case raises concern that unelected persons have unimpeded access to huge monthly allocations that are actually funds intended for democratically elected local government councils as guaranteed by Section 7 of the constitution.
Agbakoba noted that Nigeria operates democratically elected governments at the three tiers.
“The current situation where most of the 774 local governments are unelected is not only unconstitutional but meant no development at the local government level,” he said.
Agbakoba also claims that corruption is widespread in Nigeria because unelected persons that are not accountable to the electorate have received trillions of naira of public funds.