The Supreme Court of Nigeria on Friday dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Osun State Government seeking to force the Federal Government to release statutory allocations allegedly withheld from all Local Government Councils in the state.
A seven-member panel of the apex court, in a majority decision of six to one, ruled that the legal action initiated by the Osun State Attorney General was fundamentally defective and could not be entertained.
Delivering the lead judgment, Justice Mohammed Idris held that the Osun State Government lacked the proper legal capacity to activate the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction on behalf of its 30 Local Government Areas. He clarified that the Constitution empowers the Supreme Court to hear disputes directly only when they involve a state and the Federal Government, not when a state tries to litigate on behalf of local councils.
Justice Idris further emphasized that Local Government Councils are constitutionally recognized as independent legal entities. Because they have the authority to sue and be sued in their own names, the state government cannot assume their role or bring a case on their behalf under the guise of protecting public interest.
Although the court agreed with the preliminary objection raised by the Attorney General of the Federation, who argued that the suit was incompetent, the justices issued a cautionary note to the Federal Government. They urged the government to fully implement previous judgments that affirmed the fiscal autonomy of all 774 Local Government Areas across the country, stressing that federal allocations must reach the councils as required by law.
Osun State’s suit, marked SC/CV/775/2025, sought ten different orders from the Supreme Court. Among these were declarations stopping the Federal Government from paying LG allocations to former All Progressives Congress (APC) chairmen and councillors removed from office following court decisions that annulled the October 15, 2022 local government elections.
The state also asked for directives compelling the Federal Government to immediately release all monthly allocations said to have been unlawfully withheld. It requested that the funds be paid directly into accounts managed by newly elected local government officials who emerged from the February 22, 2025 elections and were sworn in the following day.
In addition, the suit sought a perpetual injunction preventing the Federal Government from suspending or withholding LG funds in the future, provided that democratically elected councils remain in place in Osun State.
However, with the Supreme Court’s dismissal of the case, the state’s attempt to use the apex court to recover the alleged withheld funds has come to an end at least through this legal route reinforcing the principle that local governments must initiate such actions on their own behalf.
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