A federal High Court in Lagos has set aside a garnishee order attaching Ekiti State Government bank accounts and those of its local government areas (LGAs) to a N3 billion judgment debt obtained by 16 ex-council chairmen and councillors.
Justice N.I. Oweibo discharged the order nisi sequel to a motion filed and argued on May 4, 2019 by Ekiti State Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, Mr. Olawale Fapohunda.
The judge held that the garnishee order had been placed in error and as such does not hold water any longer.
The 16 elected LGA chairmen and councillors were disbanded in 2010 during the first term of Governor Kayode Fayemi.
They challenged their sack and, in December 2016, they obtained a N3 billion judgment against the state at the Supreme Court.
The apex court upheld the appellate court’s decision nullifying their disbandment by Fayemi and ordered that they be paid their salaries and allowances for the remaining two years they would have spent in office.
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In a bid to enforce the judgment, the sacked LGA chairmen and councillors, through their lawyer, Mr. Chino Obiagwu (SAN), obtained an order of the Federal High Court in Lagos to attach Ekiti State Government accounts in the Central Bank of Nigeria and all commercial banks in the country for the purpose of taking the N3,075,741,478, which the Supreme Court awarded in their favour.
But Ekiti State, through Fapohunda, appeared before Justice I.N. Oweibo to stop the move.
In a further and better affidavit deposed to by a litigation officer in the office of the Ekiti State Attorney General, Owoeye Opeyemi, the state government urged the court to set aside the order empowering the plaintiffs to garnish the state accounts.
Opeyemi described the N3 billion being claimed by the sacked LGA chairmen and councillors as fictitious and bogus, contending that Ekiti State was not carried along when the sacked LGA chairmen hired a chartered accountant to arrive at the sum.
The state said with a debt profile of more than N155 billion, there was no way it could “sustain the bogus N3 billion claim of the judgment creditors and allowances.”
But the sacked LGA chairmen and councillors, through Obiagwu, urged the judge to reject the government’s plea.
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