Samuel Aruwan
Kaduna state House of Assembly has been dragged to a High Court of Justice of the state over a proposed bill by the assembly to amend Local Government Administration Law of 2012 that stipulated two years tenure for elected chairmen and councillors to three years.
A Kaduna-based lawyer, Barrister Auta Maisamari, who dragged the assembly to court along with Governor Mukhtar Ramalan Yero is also relying on a judgement delivered on August 2, 2011, by Justice Gideon Isa Kurada which declared that Kaduna state government has no powers to appoint unelected leadership for the 23 local government areas of the state, in a suit number KDH/KAD/616/2011.
The originating summons dated April 11, 2014, which our reporter gleaned further joined Kaduna state Commissioner of Justice and Attorney General, Commissioner for Local Government Affairs and State Independent Electoral Commission as defendants.
Maisamari in the summons said the state government in 2011 along with the rest of the defendants accepted the August 2, 2011, judgement and did not appeal the said judgment, and so the court should restrain the state government and as well the assembly from carrying out illegality in local government leaderships of the 23 councils.
On March 12, this year, a member of Kaduna state House of Assembly, Kantiok Irmiya Ishaku, chairman of its committee on judiciary sponsored a bill for a law to amend the Local Government Administration Law 2012 which seeks to elongate local government tenure to three years from two years enacted in 2012.
Ishaku in the proposed bill argued that the need to amend the law had become imperative towards addressing what he called “present circumstance.”
As at the time of this report, a substantive date for the first hearing had not been fixed, but a source in the Kaduna High Court, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the case would be heard after the Easter break.
