Although the yearnings of the drivers of Lagos politics for a change in the scheme of things have denied Governor Akinwunmi Ambode a second term ticket, the impeachment threats from members of the Lagos State House of Assembly indeed attracted global attention. Here, GEORGE OKOJIE takes a look at the recent disagreement between the executive and legislative arms of government in Lagos
If the national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, wants to give the impression that he calls the shots in Lagos State politics, he succeeded on Sunday when he led other party leaders to resolve the lingering rift between Lagos State Governor Akinwunmi Ambode and members of the state House of Assembly.
Impeachment threat from the Lagos State House of Assembly is not one to be trivialised because it has never failed to flex muscles with the executive arm of government, bark and bite when the need arises.
In May 2007 it impeached the former Lagos State Deputy Governor, Otunba Olufemi Pedro, at the twilight of the Bola Tinubu administration for alleged gross misconducts.
The impeachment came via a resolution adopted by the 32 members of the Assembly present at session.
Surprisingly seven years after his impeachment and subsequent forfeiture of all his entitlements as Deputy Governor of Lagos, the same Femi Pedro was pardoned by the state House of Assembly when his sins were forgiven by his boss and the party.
Again despite the series of denials, loyalists of the former governor of Lagos State, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, had at a point threatened to serve impeachment notice on the then governor of the state, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola when there was a frosty relationship between him, his boss and the party that brought him to power. They complained of being starved of funds by Fashola.
So it was not surprising when the Lagos State House of Assembly threatened to commence impeachment process against Governor Akinwunmi Ambode who has been having challenges with the party and its leadership over sundry issues. The move was tactically subsumed under infractions in the state’s 2019 budget.
As tension heightened in the state, the lawmakers summoned the governor to appear before it within one week over the 2019 budget, which has caused disagreement between the two arms of government.
The Speaker of the House, Mudashiru Obasa, stated that there had been violation of the constitution and infractions on the part of the governor.
He said, “The Attorney General, Finance commissioner and commissioner for Budget and Economic Planning that ought to have advised the governor did not do so.
“The most important thing is that we should let the people know that a budget that was yet to be approved was being spent, which was why we could not attend to the governor on the budget on Monday 21, January.
“We must give them a fair hearing to come and explain what happened.
“The point has been made that there must be something before the House before you can commence expenditure. We want to call on the governor to come within a week to explain himself.
“We can start gathering signatures for impeachment. We can exercise patience and wait till another time,” he said.
The Deputy Speaker of the House, Wasiu Eshinlokun-Sanni, as the chairman of the committee set up to look into the issues surrounding the 2019 budget pointed out that the governor ought to lay the budget of the new year before December 31, but that so far the budget was yet to be laid.
He said, “We asked them to bring out the law that allows them to spend up to 20 per cent of the budget of the preceding year. They could not bring out such law and we said what they did was wrong.
“We discovered that people have started receiving alerts and this has a grave implication for the executive.
“It is our finding that for smooth running of government, there must be a strict adherence to the constitution and it must not be violated. We decided to bring the report before the lawmakers for us to take action,” he said.
According to Gbolahan Yishawu, the Committee on Budget discovered during budget appropriation review that there were some specific expenditures in the budget that ought to have been approved by the House over which funds were expended.
Yishawu stated that these were misnomers, and that they noticed variation in the expenditure and budget approved.
“We had issues of virement and monies being spent without approval.
“We had cases of items that were not budgeted for being carried out. It shows the executive rewrite the budget at will.
“The constitution states that the State House of Assembly must approve all expenditures,” he added.
According to him, things are shutting down, things are being slowed down by the government.
He said that it was as if the executive was tired and that the people were complaining.
“It is as if nothing is happening in the state now. Breach of the constitution and gross misconduct are being committed here, and the punishment is clear.
“We should begin an impeachment process if need be if the executive does not retrace their steps,” he said.
This was corroborated by Tunde Braimoh who said the manner of revelation was of serious concern.
He stated that they all swore to uphold the tenets of the constitution of Nigeria.
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He added that Sections 120 and 121 explained the roles of each arm of government when it comes to financial expenditure.
“If we continue like this, it means we are moving on the ebb of destruction. The issue of gross misconduct should be closely looked into and necessary sanctions applied,” he said.
But as far as a coalition of civil society operating under the aegis of Lagos Liberation Movement (LLM) were concerned, the state assembly was doing the bidding of certain powerful individuals bent on humiliating the governor.
They threatened to mobilise Lagosians to force members of the Lagos State House of Assembly to abandon its plans to commence impeachment process against Governor Ambode.
Comrade Mark Adebayo who is the convener of LLM said, ‘’The political situation of Lagos State has become untenably desperate and requires the immediate attention of all true Lagosians and genuine compatriots across Nigeria. This is no time for fence-sitting. This is no time to claim political insulation or neutrality aka ‘sidonlook’. This is no time to play the ostrich.
“This is no time to allow the rulers of darkness in this state and the merchants of confusion to reign unchallenged. Rather, it is time to rein them in, and the time cannot be more auspicious than now.’’
He noted that impeachment process against Governor Ambode by the Assembly was aimed at humiliating and embarrassing the governor, saying a few political marauders were determined to supplant democracy and jeopardize the peace and development of the state.
Adebayo said, “We like to reiterate that Ambode is the governor of Lagos State and not the governor of the APC. If they have internal issues within their party that should not be allowed to negatively affect the smooth running of government and make people suffer. The whole state cannot be reduced to the parochial shenanigans of a highly corrupted political family.
‘’The office of governor of Lagos State is beyond Ambode and as such any further humiliation, disrespect and embarrassment from any quarter will be utterly resisted by the people. Lagosians are unequivocal in their view that Ambode is a performing governor base on his style of governance and project execution and as such any further attack on him will be tantamount to attacking the People. And no one can win against the people.
“We call on all men and women and leaders of goodwill including President Muhammadu Buhari who is the leader of the APC to prevail on his political ally not to proceed on this path of self-destruction and call his boys to order.”
He alleged that the governor was being attacked because he refused to release a whooping N100 billion tax payer’s money to the party to fund political campaigns.
Adebayo said, “It has been alleged that the governor’s refusal to hand over the state’s treasury key to the Lagos slave master-in-chief is the current cause of his travails. His non-compliance with the commandeering directive to make available a whopping N100bn by an insatiable political godfather provoked the current thoughtless backlash against the governor.’’
In order not allow the rift to degenerate, given the fact that the general election was around the corner, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and other party leaders in the state immediately waded into the crisis and resolved the rift between Lagos state Governor Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode and Lagos lawmakers that triggered impeachment threats against the governor in the first instance.
Tinubu said, “We held a meeting on behalf of Lagos, the entire Lagosians, our party – APC leadership. In the last one week, there has been noise about the conflict between the executive and the State Assembly. It is of great concern to all of us and particularly what Lagos represents across the country.
“We have been able to look into the source of various conflicts which is not uncommon in politics; what is the genesis of those problems? We are one big family and as a big family, you will have some rumples, you will have some disagreement. As leaders of the party, we have looked into that; we have looked into areas where we have to compromise, discuss and build the institutions, encourage the institutions to really do what is right.
“We have resolved there is no question of impeachment in Lagos State. Let the two arms of government communicate and continue to respect one another and build consensus and understanding. That is all about politics. Conflict and conflict resolution mechanism is inbuilt in any political system unless leaders are lacking in their responsibilities,” Tinubu said.
“We thank the speaker and the entire members of the House of Assembly leadership. We thank the governor and the deputy governor who had demonstrated firm respect for the party leadership in Lagos State.
“You know when Lagos sneezes, the rest of the political equation catches cold and we are very happy that we are able to resolve amicably. The deputy speaker is also here and all of them put together, we are assured that things will start to run smoothly in Lagos both the House and the government,” he said.
In the same vein, another party chieftain, Prince Tajudeen Olusi, corroborated Tinubu’s position and expressed optimism that the House would soon meet to resolve other grey areas.
“The National Leader (Tinubu) has spoken and mine is just to confirm the decision. Conflict resolution is an essential ingredient of management. We have looked into the problem and the party has directed the two arms of government – the executive and the legislature to work together and very soon, the House will meet and resolve all grey areas,” Olusi said.
