NATION

NIC overrules Sanwo-Olu on parks management, throws MC Oluomo

A National Industrial Court, sitting in Lagos, has overruled Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu and nullified the Lagos State Parks Management he had set up in the state.

TheCornet reported that the government, in 2022, banned both the National Union of Road Transport Workers and the Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria from operating in motor parks in the state. Gbenga Omotosho, commissioner for information and strategy, had at the time said “the government set up the Parks Management Committee in fulfillment of the government’s promise to ensure that events NURTW are not allowed to threaten law and order.”

“The government has, therefore, exercised its constitutional powers to ensure that no vacuum, which can disrupt the peace of our dear state, is allowed to exist in the parks,” Omotosho affirmed in a government statement.

The ban had been seen as ploy to protect a transport union leader, Musilu Akinsanya (aka MC Oluomo), after he fell out with the national leadership of the NURTW.

Ruling on the suit instituted by the RTEAN, Justice Maureen Esowe, upturned the dissolution of the rival union while nullifying the appointment by the government of a caretaker committee, (Parks and Garages Administrators.)

Esowe agreed with RTEAN’s counsel Elisha Kurah, SAN, that the dissolution was wrong, given that the union is registered under the Trade Unions Act of 2004 and only the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment could proscribe it.

The Lagos state government’s defence that its decision merely aimed to forestall violence and to ensure law and order cut no ice with the judge.

Justice Esowe, rather, held that the action was illegal and against the provisions of Sections 4 (1), (2)& (3), and 5 (1) &(3), read along with item 34 of the exclusive legislative list, of the 1999 Constitution, as amended.

The judge also held that the government and the Police should have intervened by arresting and prosecuting those behind the fracas and not inquiring into the dispute.

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