Councillors Accuse Jigawa Assembly Speaker of Illegality, Constitutional Breaches
By: Ahmed Aminu, Dutse
Councillors in Garki local government area of Jigawa state have berated the state House of Assembly for illegally interfering in the affairs of the local legislative council.
They said on Saturday in a statement that attempts by the Speaker of Jigawa State House of Assembly, Haruna Aliyu Dangyatin to reverse the removal of the leader of the legislative Assembly was a flagrant breach of the Constitution and a threat to democracy.
The Syndicate reports that councillors had on Friday removed the leader of the legislative council, Jamilu Adamu, over poor leadership.
According to the councillors, the Speaker is allegedly trying to force them to reverse the decision and is using the state Assembly to justify his Illegal actions.
“What happened in Garki local government and actions by the speaker of the state house of Assembly is a serious threats to democracy and illegal interference in the affairs of the local government legislative council as provided in the Nigerian constitution.
“The Nigerian constitution has clearly defined the role of each of the three tiers of government, their powers and jurisdictions. So also the the Nigerian law guiding the document have defined and gave each of them powers, roles and jurisdictions at their respective levels.
“We are the duly elected Garki local government councillors. We are empowered by the constitution to elect our leader, which we did. The same constitution gave us the power to remove him based on constitutionally approved offences, legal guidelines and approved processes.
“Due to some offences committed by our leader, we decided to remove him. Since we were elected for over a year now, we’ve never held a council session even ones.
“We never for once discussed any issue, any matter that needs our approval as empowered by the constitution, especially Garki local council financial spendings, contact awards and payments.
“There has been no formation of any committee at the legislative level for oversight visits, assessment and monitoring of projects, and many other things.
“So, based on this, we called the attention of the leader to draw the attention of the local government council chairman to ensure due process, but said he is afraid of the chairman.
“So met and seven of us agreed and signed his removal and replaced him. But to our greatest surprise, the Speaker of the State Assembly summoned us to his resident in the middle of the night, intimidating and directing us to reverse the decision.
“What the Speaker of the state Assembly has done is a trespass into our constitutional jurisdiction. We all condemn it,” the councillors stated.
Efforts to contact the Speaker to respond to the allegation was not successful as he did not answer calls made to his cell phone nor responded to text messages sent to him.
However, the Chairman House Committee on Information, Ibrahim Hashimu Kanya said the state Assembly has quashed the impeachment of the leader of the Garki local government legislature, claiming it did not follow due process.
A prominent lawyer, Barrister Baffa Alhassan, however said “though the local government law is changing from time to time, but with recent Supreme Court ruling on local government council autonomy, the Jigawa state house of Assembly has no power to interfere in the local government council finances and administration”.
“With the Supreme Court ruling on local government council autonomy, the councillors have power on anything at local council level.
“For example, state Houses of Assembly have no right now to remove local government council chairman, it is the responsibility of the councillors. So also they have no right to remove the leader of the legislative Assembly if found guilty of impeachable offences”.
