The Osun State Government has filed a fresh suit at the Supreme Court against the Attorney-General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), over what it described as the unlawful withholding of statutory allocations due to its 30 local government councils since March 2025.
Naija News reports that the new legal action, instituted on Monday, comes months after the state applied to withdraw an earlier case on the same subject.
In the originating summons, filed by the state’s Attorney-General with a legal team led by Mike Ozekhome (SAN) and Musibau Adetunbi (SAN), Osun is asking the apex court to compel the Federal Government to release all seized allocations and halt what it termed an “unconstitutional and arbitrary seizure” of local government revenues.
According to the state, the AGF ignored subsisting judgments of the Federal High Court, Osogbo (delivered on November 30, 2022), and the Court of Appeal (delivered on June 13, 2025), both of which affirmed the legitimacy of council chairmen and councillors elected on February 22, 2025.
The AGF, in a letter dated March 26, 2025, advised that allocations be withheld pending the resolution of what he referred to as a “local government crisis.”
However, Osun insisted that the matter had already been resolved by the Court of Appeal, which had nullified the October 2022 elections conducted under the previous administration.
Among the reliefs, Osun is seeking declarations that the AGF lacks constitutional power to seize local government funds and that his actions contravene valid court judgments.
The state is also praying the Supreme Court for a perpetual injunction restraining the Federal Government from future seizures, while demanding the immediate release of all withheld allocations directly into the accounts of the duly elected councils.
Part of the summons reads, “The seizure, suspension, withholding and/or refusal to pay the allocations and revenues due to the constituent local government councils of the plaintiff state… is unconstitutional, unlawful, wrongful and ultra vires the powers of the defendant.”
Simultaneously, Osun has also filed another suit at the Federal High Court, Osogbo, challenging the Chief Judge’s decision to transfer an earlier case on the same funds to Abuja for hearing by a vacation judge.
The state warned that allowing the Abuja proceedings to continue while the Supreme Court is seized of the matter could lead to conflicting judgments.
In an affidavit, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Olufemi Akande Ogundun, described the Federal Government’s action as “an affront to the rule of law.”
He argued that only the Supreme Court could conclusively determine the constitutional questions involved, citing precedents such as A.G. Kano State v. A.G. Federation (2007) and RMAFC v. A.G. Rivers State (2023).
The affidavit also accused the AGF of “self-induced urgency,” claiming he delayed for more than 80 days before filing an affidavit of urgency on August 13, 2025.
According to the state, the transfer of the matter to Abuja “casts the lot of the court with the AGF” and risks creating a perception of bias.
As of press time, no date has been fixed for the hearing of the suits.
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