Plot To Impeach Ambode Thickens
Lawmakers Collate Signatures Plan to Remove Gov Before Presidential Election
Barring any last minute change of hearts, the Lagos State House of Assembly will formally commence impeachment proceedings against Governor Akinwunmi Ambode this week. Credible sources within the State Assembly confided in Daily Trust on Sunday that the state lawmakers had started collating signatures, and if things proceed as planned, the governor might be removed before the February 16, 2019 presidential election.
Since Monday, January 28, when the lawmakers gave a week ultimatum to the governor and three of his commissioners to appear before it and explain why allocations in the 2019 budget was already being spent without the Assembly’s approval, there has been spirited efforts from prominent individuals, bodies and groups to avert the possible impeachment of the governor.
The lawmakers, Daily Trust on Sunday gathered, have however, been pushing back. In each of the two of the emergency meetings held on Wednesday, January 30 and Friday, February 1, the resolve among the majority was that the impeachment proceedings should be formally kickstarted, if by Monday, February 4, Governor Ambode refused to do “the needful.”
Although some have speculated that the Friday meeting, which was allegedly held at the instance of the state deputy governor, Dr Idiat Adebule, was to find an amicable resolution, the forces insisting on the governor’s removal seem not to be backing down.
The meeting with Adebule was led by a committee headed by the Majority Leader, Sanai Agunbiade. He was accompanied by Lanre Ogunyemi, Dayo Fafunmi, Moshood Oshun and Mojisola Miranda.
“We are taking our time before we act. Even though there has been serious pushback from so many quarters pleading that we should just let the governor be, we are nonetheless being guided by our conviction that we must do the right thing for Lagosians. We are elected to protect their interest and we cannot sacrifice that interest on the altar of political expediency.
“As we speak, we have been collating signatures to kick-start the impeachment. And we already have more than necessary, but there’s a couple of other things we need to clear first. I cannot be disclosing that, but I can assure you that except the governor and the commissioners asked to show up did as requested, we may have no other choice but to proceed with the process,” a lawmaker who was privy to the meetings but will not want to be mentioned said.
He also said the impeachment may take place before the presidential election billed for February 16.
The need to give a semblance of fairness was what the Assembly Speaker, Mudashiru Obasa canvassed when the matter was first raised on the floor of the House on January 28. The committee set up to look into the issues surrounding the 2019 budget had alleged that money yet to be approved was already being spent, and that it had become expedient for the lawmakers to act on the part of constitutionality.
The report of the committee, headed by the Deputy Speaker, Wasiu Eshinlokun-Sanni, appeared to have angered lawmakers, with many demanding immediate commencement of proceeding.
But Obasa, in his response said, “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. The governor should come along with his three commissioners for finance, budget and planning, and the attorney-general. Those who are interested can start gathering signatures for impeachment. But we can exercise patience and wait till another time.”
Yet, there are those who believe that the lawmakers were the ones who deliberately walked the governor into a tightrope over the budget. The argument was that whereas the governor sent the budget proposal as it has been the tradition, in the preceding year, the lawmakers were the ones who had been foot-dragging. Although it was said that the legislators were on recess when the governor claimed to have brought it to the Assembly, many had expected that on resumption on January 6, the budget proposal was one of the things to be considered.
However, that was not to be. While the House insisted that the governor must come in person to lay the budget before it as required by the law, the governor and his supporters said that since the budget had been sent in before resumption from the recess, the lawmakers were the ones to give him a date to present it.
“The House is the one that needs to invite the governor for presentation. The fact that the governor will not be returning for a second term has not said he would stop performing his role,” one of the governor’s aides who spoke under anonymity told Daily Trust on Sunday.
But for those who know, the bone of contention between the governor and the legislators is much more than the row over the 2019 budget proposal.
Daily Trust on Sunday had exclusively reported that despite assurances by Speaker Obasa at one of the House proceedings, that the plan to impeach the governor was not in their agenda, credible sources informed that the impeachment process was only being suspended but to be used subsequently at “whipping him into submission anytime he is suspected to be working in contravention of the party’s interest.”
Ambode and the leadership of the Assembly have always had frosty relationship, yet that has never come to the open until the governor’s quest for a second term ticket was aborted by its party - the Lagos State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the governor’s political godfather, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.
While the contest for the party’s gubernatorial candidate ticket was raging, 36 lawmakers out of 39 who are members of the APC declared open allegiance with Ambode’s rival, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who eventually secured the ticket to fly the party’s flag in the March 2 gubernatorial election.
Although Ambode had reluctantly accepted the party’s verdict and have since
been organising rallies and campaigns in support of Sanwo-Olu’s candidacy, yet, not a few have accused him of being pretentious. They alleged that he had been hobnobbing with the leading opposition candidate, Jimi Agbaje of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Those who are quick to accuse the governor of half-hearted commitment have cited the defection of Olawale Oluwo, who was until recently, the Commissioner for Energy and Mineral Resources. The argument even derived strength from the fact that Oluwo is Ambode’s right hand man, who also hails from Epe, the governor’s hometown.
Already, about N2.4billion is speculated as the fund so far channelled from Ambode to Agbaje’s campaign. This allegation has, however, been denied by both the governor and Agbaje.
There are those who are also accusing the governor of wanting to use state security apparatus against the ruling APC. Those pushing this line of thought cited the violence that greeted the formal launch of Sanwo-Olu’s campaign rally on January 6, where a chieftain of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), Musiliu Akinsanya, popularly known as MC Oluomo, was stabbed by a rival gang. Oluomo is a known ally of Tinubu and APC in the state.
But while the police declared one Mustapha Adekunle wanted (whom many believed is a right hand man of MC Oluomo), Oluomo’s sympathizers accused the police of bias, saying it was Azeez Lawal, otherwise known as “Kunle Poly”, who is known to be embroiled in leadership tussle with MC Oluomo, who ought to be declared wanted because he was suspected to have led the thugs who attacked Oluomo. Until the fracas, the state Commissioner of Police, Imohimi Edgal, who incidentally was Ambode’s classmate in secondary school, was already being suspected of being the governor’s puppet.
Those who know claimed that the fracas and the subsequent action of the police unsettled the leadership of the APC, whom many alleged, pushed for the removal of Edgal under the leadership of the former Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris. Edgal was to be replaced by the Assistant Commissioner of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, who once served as the chief security officer to Tinubu, the APC national leader when he was the Lagos State governor.
But in a dramatic twist of fate, few minutes after the new Acting Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, took over from Ibrahim Idris, a signal was said to have come from Abuja, asking that Edgal, who was about handing over power to Egbetokun in Lagos, suspend all actions and continue to perform his duties as the commissioner of police in the state. The highwire politics, many alleged, may not be unconnected with Ambode’s backing to cause the reversal of the transfer.
For this, many APC chieftains are said to be aggrieved that the governor may be all out to ruin the party’s chances at the polls.
Another grouse of the lawmakers and APC hierarchy, according to a prominent chieftain of the party from Lagos Central, was that the governor, unlike his predecessors, had not been funding the party and its candidates.
“In the past, we know what our governors usually donated as support to candidates and the party, but Ambode will rather be looking elsewhere; maybe because he lost the party’s ticket, but even at that, he is expected to be a true party man. After all, there are many other opportunities ahead of him. But he seems ready to burn all bridges,” he said.
But there are those who believe the party and the legislators are the ones willing to burn all bridges. A respected Professor of International Law, Akin Oyebode, in a recent media interview, warned that impeaching Ambode may sound “a death knell” for the party in the forthcoming general elections in the state.
He was not alone. A civil rights group, the Lagos People’s Assembly that led a rally to the state Assembly on Wednesday, which subsequently forced the lawmakers into an emergency meeting, was emphatic that the Lagos electorate won’t hesitate not to vote for the party’s candidates if the legislators go ahead to remove Ambode.
“Ambode has been performing. He has been a loyal party man even after he lost his re-election ticket. And we know the Assembly is filled with reasonable men and women. We love the members and want them to be re-elected. The APC should know that if it has been scoring 70 per cent before, without removing Ambode it will increase to 90 per cent. But if Ambode is removed, the party’s fortune will be affected,” Declan Ihekaire, leader of the Lagos Peoples’ Assembly said.
In what could be taken as readiness for a messy fight, another rights groupthe Legislative Probity and Accountability (LPA), is now asking the state Assembly to account for the sum of N28.8 billion running cost that has allegedly been collected under the leadership of Speaker Obasa. The group, in a statement by its leader, Olu Fajana, noted that the planned impeachment of the governor was part of the desperation of his adversaries to hang on him, accusations that he had been funding the campaign of Agbaje.
“If they fail to respond in five days, we shall mobilise Nigerians of like-minds and legally compel the Assembly to do the needful,” Fajana noted in the statement.
In a statement made available to Daily Trust on Sunday by the media unit of his campaign organisation, Agbaje described the planned impeachment of Ambode as a smokescreen the Assembly members would not want to make open.
“I received the news of the impending impeachment of Governor Akinwunmi Ambode with a lot of reservation, especially with its timing and motive. This is just 19 or so days to the general elections. So the natural questions to ask are: Why this haste? And what is the motive?” Agbaje said.
He stated that although the Legislature reserved the right to perform oversight functions, “such responsibility should not be abused. It should be carried out in a manner that places the citizens’ interest above any pecuniary benefit to a vested interest.”
Efforts to get the responses of the chief press secretary to the governor, Habib Aruna and that of the chairman, House Committee on Information, Funmi Tejuosho, proved abortive. They neither picked their calls nor respond to messages sent to their mobile phones.
However, the state publicity secretary of the APC, Joe Igbokwe, said the party was using internal mechanism to look at the issue. “I can’t tell you what we are doing, but we are doing something about it,” he said.
Political pundits are of the view that if Ambode is eventually removed, the development would mark a watershed as he would become the first elected governor of Lagos State to be impeached in its 52-year history. Between 1967 and now, Lagos has had five elected governors, four of whom came before Ambode’s emergence. They are: Lateef Jakande, I979-1983; Michael Otedola 1991-1993; Bola Ahmed Tinubu, 1999-2007 and Babatunde Fashola, 2007-2015.