The group of sacked chairmen and councilors, led by its chairman, Prince Ayodeji Abass-Aleshinloye, stated this in Ibadan on Wednesday while addressing newsmen over the governor’s recent utterance on the matter.

Makinde had on Saturday claimed that the former local government chairmen and councilors were distracting his government.

Abass-Aleshinloye said such should not be when their group had lost 27 members to death in the last four years.

He said that was due to lack of money to take care of their health challenges, owing to non-payment of their entitlements.

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“The court that ordered Makinde to pay our money is the Supreme Court of Nigeria and not any other court.

“So, his contention that he is going back to the Supreme Court is a clear deception and deliberate misinformation.

“The court gave its judgment on May 7 in 2021, a day on which it equally gave a similar judgment against the Governor of Katsina State. It suffices to say the latter has since complied with the judgment of the apex court.

“Makinde knows that the Supreme Court, which ordered him to pay in the first place, can no longer order him not to pay. This is just an exercise in futility,” Abass-Aleshinloye said.

Abass-Aleshinloye, who disclosed that the total entitlements was reduced to N4.8 billion from N7.2 billion, said the Makinde-led government only paid N1.5 billion in two tranches.

“The actual entitlement is N7.2 billion, but they pleaded and we agreed that we will collect N4.8 billion in the interest of our dear state.

“They only paid N1.5 billion in two batches. One in 2021 and the other in 2022. Since then, they have refused to pay.

“As law-abiding citizens, we will continue to explore all legal means to get our entitlements. We are engaging our legal and technical advisers to get the entitlements as good citizens.

“We leave it to the conscience of every citizen of the state to judge the level at which both parties have shown respect for the rule of law,” he said.

Source: NAN

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Justice A.O. Ebong of an Abuja Federal High Court had, on December 15, issued an order attaching the accounts of the state government in 10 commercial banks in the country.

Ebong gave the order while ruling on a garnishee proceeding initiated by the local government chairmen sacked on May 29, 2019 by Governor Seyi Makinde.

The former council chairmen and councillors had, in 2021, got a N4,874,889,425 judgment against Makinde and other officials and agencies of the state.

Reacting to the judgment, Abass-Aleshinloye told the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, that it was unfortunate that 27 out of their members who took the government to court had died in the course of pursuing their entitlements.

He attributed their death to lack of money to take care of their health challenges, adding that their passing away was avoidable.

“We got a judgment that the state government should pay us our entitlements but they refused to pay at that time and were just wasting our time.

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“The lesson from this judgment is that government must always allow the rule of law to thrive; there should be less of arrogance on the part of the executives, especially when it comes to legal issues,” he said.

Abass-Aleshinloye, who was chairman of Oluyole local government council, expressed sadness over situations where Supreme Court judgments were being disobeyed with impunity.

“We got a judgment at the Supreme Court, only for it not to be obeyed. It is very unfortunate that we have to go to court to freeze government accounts,” he said.

The former ALGON chairman called on other state governments to learn from the development and shun the habit of sacking democratically-elected council chairmen and councillors in order to avoid that type of development.

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