The Federal High Court in Abuja has extended the hearing on an exparte motion concerning Joint Account Funding, jointly filed by 44 local governments of Kano state against the State government and two other entities.<\/p>\n
Initiated on December 27th, 2023, the lawsuit challenges the actions of the Kano State government, the Kano State Attorney-General, and Commissioner for Justice, and the Accountant General of Kano. The plaintiffs sought an interim injunction to prevent the defendants from tampering with or spending funds from the joint account belonging to both local governments and the state.<\/p>\n
The legal action stems from the allocation of N27 billion for the Tal\u2019udu Cloverleaf overpass bridge and Dan\u2019Agundi Interchange Bridge, funded through the Local and State Government Joint Account.<\/p>\n
While Justice Donatus Okorowo did not grant the application as requested, he ordered the defendants to appear before him on Wednesday, 3rd January 2024, to show cause why the interim restraining orders should not be granted. The judge also mandated that the processes be served on the defendants through substituted means.<\/p>\n
During the resumed hearing, the counsel to the Kano state government, Afeez Matanmi, requested an extension period to thoroughly study the brief and respond adequately. He highlighted that he was briefed by his client only on Tuesday and had entered a memorandum of conditional appearance.<\/p>\n
Matanmi argued that there was no way he could present a case without reviewing all the relevant documents, emphasizing that the court rules did not specify a specific timeframe for showing cause. He expressed the view that even if the court had set a timeframe, it was still within its discretion to extend it.<\/p>\n
Counsels to the Kano Attorney General and Commissioner of Justice, as well as the Accountant General of Kano state, Okechukwu Edeze, aligned with the arguments of the Kano state government counsel, seeking a further adjournment in the interest of fair hearing.<\/p>\n
In response, Counsel to the plaintiffs, Ibrahim Aliyu Nassarawa, stressed that the defendants were directed to show cause in line with the court order but had not done so within the stipulated three days. He urged the court to restrain the Kano state government pending the determination of the case.<\/p>\n
Justice Okorowo acknowledged that the three-day timeframe had been affected by public holidays and issued a fresh seven-day extension for the Kano state government and the two other defendants to show cause. Further hearing on the matter is adjourned to January 11th, 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Federal High Court in Abuja has extended the hearing on an exparte motion concerning Joint Account Funding, jointly filed by 44 local governments of Kano state against the State government and two other entities. Initiated on December 27th, 2023, the lawsuit challenges the actions of the Kano State government, the Kano State Attorney-General, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":13206,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13204"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13210,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13204\/revisions\/13210"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}