LASPA lacks legal power to collect parking fees in Lagos, says Falana

Femi Falana, human rights lawyer, says the Lagos State Parking Authority (LASPA) lacks the power to fix and collect parking fees in the state.

The Lagos state government has commenced the collection of levies for cars parked outside the perimeter fence of companies.

In a letter seen by TheCable, dated August 15 and sent by LASPA to Nellies, a food and snack company, the agency charged N290,000 annually for parking lots on setbacks.

A setback is a minimum distance from a property line to which a building must be set back from a street or road.

Falana had earlier described the policy as unconstitutional and urged the state government to withdraw it without delay.

However, Adebayo Haroun, senior special assistant to the Lagos commissioner for justice, insisted that the parking levy has legal backing.

“The Lagos State Parking Authority Law, 2018, empowers the local government and local council development areas in Lagos state to assign their powers in respect of collection of fees relating to parking to the state government,” Haroun had said.

“Accordingly, by a mutual agreement, the local government areas and local council development areas in Lagos state have assigned their powers to the state government to collect fees on parking in Lagos state.”

But in a statement on Thursday, Falana, citing judicial references, said the state government lacks the power to carry out such functions.

“It is curious to note that Mr. Haroun did not refer to the more relevant case of Airtel Nigeria Limited v Attorney-General of Lagos State & 3 Ors (2019) 1 NCLR 1, where the court of appeal held that it was unable to agree with the appellant, that the third respondent (Etti Osa Local Government) does not have power to make law that relates to private parking since there was nothing in the bye law that is inconsistent with Section 7 and Paragraph 1 of the Fourth Schedule to the Constitution,” the statement reads.

“However, with respect to the case of Ola Animashaun Harimot Oluwabukola v. Attorney-General of Lagos State & 5 Ors, the court of appeal did not pay attention to the case of Knight Frank & Rutley Nigeria Limited V. Attorney General of Kano State (1998) 7 NWLR (PT 556) 1 at 24 where Kutigi JSC (as he then was) stated as follows:

“‘The Court of Appeal must therefore in my view be right when it opined thus: Could the powers of the state and local government councils to order for valuation of rateable hereditaments co-exist and be complementary?’

“I believe that once the State passes a legislation assigning the functions of valuation of tenement rates to the Local Government as the Constitution has directed, only the Local Government Council will have the power to deal with that subject.

“The State has no power to deal with the matter and the Local Government Council cannot, even if it wants to, divest itself of those powers.”

The human rights lawyer added that “in view of the authoritative pronouncement of the supreme court on the illegality of usurping the powers conferred on local governments by state governments, it is indisputably clear that the local governments cannot be legitimately divested of the powers conferred on them by section 7 of the Constitution to fix and collect parking fees in Lagos state.

“Therefore, the Lagos State Parking Authority lacks the power to fix and collect parking fees in Lagos State in any manner whatsoever and howsoever.”