The 36 states of the Nigeria have dragged the Federal Government before the Supreme Court, challenging the presidential executive order signed in May by President Muhammadu Buhari.
The states filed the suit through their 36 attorneys general and are seeking an order of the Supreme Court quashing President Buhari’s executive order on the funding of courts for being unconstitutional.
The Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami is listed as the sole respondent in the suit.
In the suit filed on their behalf by nine Senior Advocates of Nigeria, led by a former President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Augustine Alegeh and six other senior lawyers, the 36 states insist that President Buhari, by virtue of the executive order he signed on May 20, 2020, had pushed the Federal Government’s responsibility of funding both the capital and recurrent expenditures of the state High Courts, Sharia Courts of Appeal and the Customary Courts of Appeal, to the state governments.
They contend that the President’s executive order no. 00-10 of 2020 is a clear violation of sections 6 and 8(3) of the 1999 constitution, which makes it the responsibility of the federal government to fund the listed courts.
The 36 states, while claiming that they had been funding the capital projects in the listed courts since 2009, are also asking the Supreme Court to order the Federal Government to make a refund to them.
