Atiku Abubakar has told President Bola Tinubu to stop talking and start acting on the Supreme Court ruling that hands local governments their purse strings.
In July 2024 a seven-man panel unanimously declared it unconstitutional for state governments to pocket or supervise council funds. The court also struck down caretaker committees, saying they keep councils under state control and breach the 1999 Constitution.
Speaking at last weekend’s APC National Executive Committee meeting at the Presidential Villa, Tinubu asked governors to respect the judgment and hinted he might sign an Executive Order to channel allocations straight to local councils if they refuse.
Atiku fired back online, calling the threat hot air. “There is nothing to negotiate,” he wrote. “Just tell the Attorney-General to release the money—today.”
The former vice-president, now a senior member of the African Democratic Congress, said Tinubu’s foot-dragging smells like politics: dangle compliance over opposition governors to pull them into the APC while tightening the leash on his own party’s state bosses.
Supreme Court verdicts, Atiku reminded him, are “final and mandatory.” Ignoring one, he added, “betrays the oath you swore and the people who queued to vote.”
“Dragging this out,” he finished, “only proves that holding power matters more to you than keeping the Constitution, more than economic justice, more than the price of bread in Maiduguri or the taxi fare in Makurdi. Nigerians will remember who blinked.”
