A LAW passed by Ekiti State House of Assembly empowering Governor Kayode Fayemi to appoint political aides for council chairmen has been nullified by the state's High Court.
An Ado-Ekiti High Court presided over by Justice Isaac Ogunyemi has ruled that the governor has no constitutional power to appoint secretary, personal assistants and supervisory councillors for the council chairmen.
The ruling followed a suit filed by a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain, Mr. Samuel Ajide Olayemi, challenging the constitutionality or otherwise of the Local Government Administration (Amendment) Law 2011 passed by the House of Assembly.
In the judgment, the court ruled that the amended law contravened Sections 7(1), 1(1), 4(7), 40, 192 and 208 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and as such be nullified.
The judge, however, declined the relief for an interlocutory injunction restraining the State Independent Electoral Commission from conducting election under the present circumstance.
Olayemi, a chairmanship candidate of the PDP in the botched February 4, 2012 council election for Moba Council of the state, had gone to court to challenge the law, positing that it was autocratic in nature.
In the suit filed on February 23, 2012 by Olayemi, he also urged the court to see the law as vexatious and antithetical to democratic norms and thereby be set aside.
Through his counsel, Obafemi Adewale , he canvassed before the court that the passage of the bill and subsequent assent by the governor has rubbished the integrity of the Assembly and portrayed it as incompetent.
Apart from Fayemi, other respondents in the suit are the Speaker, Ekiti State House of Assembly, the State House of Assembly, Attorney-General of the State and the State Independent Electoral Commission.
