By Olatunbosun Obafemi
The lingering battle over the control of local government councils in Osun State has taken a legal turn, as the state government has filed a suit against the Federal Government at the Supreme Court over the alleged illegal withholding of local government allocations.
The Osun State Government, under the leadership of Governor Ademola Adeleke of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), is accusing the Federal Government of seizing funds meant for its 30 local government councils for the months of February, March, and April 2025. Allocation for May is yet to be confirmed. The state contends that the decision to withhold these funds lacks constitutional backing and poses a direct threat to grassroots governance.
In a suit marked SC/CV/379/2025, filed on April 23, 2025, by Senior Advocate of Nigeria Musibau Adetunbi on behalf of the Attorney General of Osun State, the sole defendant is the Attorney General of the Federation. The suit seeks an order compelling the Federal Government to release the withheld allocations and to restrain it from further withholding or suspending payments due to the state’s local councils.
Central to the legal challenge is the claim that Osun State has duly elected local government councils, and therefore, under Sections 7 and 162 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), the Federal Government has no legal grounds to withhold statutory allocations. The state further cites previous Supreme Court decisions – including A.G. Lagos v. A.G. Federation and A.G. Federation v. A.G. Abia State – to back its argument that the Federal Government’s actions are unconstitutional.
In its originating summons, the state is asking the apex court to decide whether the withholding of the funds, in spite of the existence of democratically elected councils, is lawful. The state also seeks several declarations, including one affirming that the Federal Government’s actions are not only illegal but also threaten the existence and governance of its local government institutions.
An affidavit of extreme urgency was also filed by Osun’s Commissioner for Finance, Ogungbile Adeola Olusola, who warned that the continued seizure of the funds could paralyze critical sectors such as education and healthcare across the state.
“If the defendant is not urgently restrained from further withholding…the local government councils would not be able to function and perform their constitutional obligations,” he stated. “The continuous seizure…would cripple the governance and subsistence of the local government councils and, by extension, the governance of the state itself.”
The legal action comes amid heightened political tension between the PDP-led Osun State Government and the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC), which had earlier called on the Federal Government to halt allocations to Osun local councils. The APC alleged that Governor Adeleke’s administration conducted a “purported” local government election on February 22, 2025, in defiance of a subsisting judgment from the Court of Appeal, which it claimed had nullified the process.
APC spokesperson Felix Morka argued that federal allocations should only be disbursed to “democratically elected and judicially certified” local government officials. However, the PDP and Osun State Government maintain that the election was legitimate, noting that the APC’s appeal against the sacking of its former council chairmen—removed by a Federal High Court judgment on November 30, 2022 – was dismissed by the Court of Appeal in January 2025 for lack of diligent prosecution.
That legal tussle is not yet over. The APC recently returned to the Court of Appeal with an application to relist its appeal against the 2022 judgment. Ruling on that application has been adjourned, with no date yet announced.
Meanwhile, amid the deepening dispute, the Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC) in Osun has appealed to the Federal Government not to punish local governments or the people of the state over unresolved legal and political disputes.
The Supreme Court has not fixed a date for hearing Osun’s case, but the urgency clause in the affidavit suggests that the state is pushing for a swift judicial intervention to avert what it describes as a looming governance crisis at the grassroots.
