Masari Set For Council Polls After Six Years Of Legal Battle

The Katsina State Governor, Aminu Bello Masari, yesterday, said his administration has concluded arrangements to conduct Local government elections in the first quarter of 2022.

Masari, who unveiled this while speaking with journalists at the Government House, Katsina, noted that 70 per cent of the needed apparatus have been acquired by the state government for the exercise.

Barely a month after he was first sworn in six years ago, Masari sacked the 34 local government council chairmen and their 361 councillors over what he termed financial misappropriation by the dissolved officials.

The sacked local government council officials, all from the former ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), ran to court to challenge what they described as illegal removal from office by the governor.

The legal journey that started in Katsina and went through Kaduna terminated in Abuja, when the Supreme Court in May this year, in a unanimous judgment, declared the sack of the council officials as “illegal, unconstitutional, null and void.”

The Apex Court ordered the state government to pay the sacked officials their entitlements for the remainder of their tenure.

But Masari, during the media chat, said the state government has paid the entitlements of the dissolved officials and a committee has been inaugurated under the chairmanship of Muntari Lawal, in collaboration with other relevant bodies for the conduct of the election.

“70 per cent of what is required for the election is on the ground, and we are hoping to conduct the election first quarter of next year. The delay in the conduct of the election was due to the court case instituted by the PDP, and we as a government didn’t want to go ahead with the polls due to the then pending case,” he explained.