Plateau Governor Simon Lalong on Monday expressed readiness for an out-of-court settlement with local government officials he sacked In 2015.

The Governor stated this before Justice Philomena Lot of Jos High Court IV, through his Counsel, Mr Sunday Obende, when the case filed by 25 sacked chairmen and vice chairmen of the 17 local governments came up.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), reports that Lalong had, on July 6, 2015, sacked the elected council officials, and replaced them with interim management committees.

No reason was given for the sack of the council officials that had two years left of their three-years tenure, when they were removed.

Aggrieved by the action, the sacked officials dragged Lalong, the State’s Attorney General, the State House of Assembly and the Plateau State Independent Electoral Commission (PLASIEC) to court as 1st, 2nd , 3rd and 4th defendants.

The officials, through their Counsel, Mr Philemon Daffi, asked the court to declare their sack as “unlawful, illegal,unconstitutional, null and void’’.

They also requested for an order compelling the defendants to pay them an accumulative N250,123,075.86 being their withheld salaries and allowances, from July 2015 to March 3, 2017, to complete the residues of their respective tenures.

When the case was last heard on March 10, 2017, Justice Lot had advised the Plateau Government and the sacked local government chairmen to pursue an out-of-court settlement to the dispute arising from the sack.

The judge advised lawyers to all parties to talk to their clients toward finding a common ground for an out-of-court settlement, and adjourned the matter to April 10.