Story by Razaq A. Jimoh, Toyo C. Ngem and Hakeeb Omoyosi
When a dancer continues to dance after the stop of drum beat, it is time for insanity check. In core agenda of the story – “Secret of the Shindig” -- we set in serial a while back, the destination was supposed to be ‘why Obasa may face impeachment’ in conclusion. This informed the parable intoned in the last serial entitled “…The Drum Beat for Obasa’s Dance”. The embedded code expected to be revealed in the conclusive serial is that Obasa could ‘still be dancing when the beat has stopped’. This is because evidence, as gathered by this magazine, would appear to show that he had worked wholesomely in breach of the sacrosanct rules spanning across the governance, politics and integrity of government structure of Lagos. The convergence of all these offences had come to make the defining moment for his impeachment as his comeuppance.
While his eventual impeachment may have stolen the show on the order of this serial, the core offences of Obasa remain a part of the secret to be unveiled, as misleading insinuations may soon begin to fill the vacuum in the absence of connecting facts. On the political side of his offences, for example, Alimosho’s crisis is also a defining issue, but that definitely excludes the suspension of Council Chairman and the underpinning matters of Alhaji Abiodun Ejigbadero. But many are wont to erroneously connect this to his fate.
His impeachment by endorsement of 32 out of 39 floor members of the House (to exclude him) would show a spread of significant statement that it was the decision of the Lagos’ ruling elite that got rid of him at their convenience. How and why it happened is the thematic perspective this story on Obasa’s impeachment intends to uniquely present to our esteem readers. This is what we see as “The Defining Matters and Offending Issues” in the impeachment. It is the ‘secret’ of Lagos politics you may never be told.
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In the last serial of this ‘Secret of the Shindig’, it was revealed that the vociferous defences for Obasa’s actions came largely in part from Ifako/Ijaye. Therefore, it could not have been a coincidence but a vindication of our investigative capacity that one of the local government that partly refused to support the impeachment is the Ifako/Ijaye. That should suffice for a clear indication of how far Civics Weekly is poised to serve our readers with access to fact of the news.
It is no brainer that Obasa truly enjoys the support of Asiwaju Tinubu. At the meeting convened to his Bourdillon home in early 2021, ostensibly for the final parting of ways with his erstwhile trusted political ally, Ogbeni AbdulRauf Aregbesola, Tinubu reportedly made it in confession that Obasa was his eyes in the government structure of the state. Interestingly, he made the statement in context of scolding Bisi Yusuf. “Don’t you know that the Obasa you are revolting against in the House is my eyes in the government”, he pointedly told the Honourable – then a member of the Assembly representing Alimosho Constituency 01. This is a different story for a latter day.
This magazine yet gathered that even up to the moment of his travails, left to President Tinubu, “a mere reprimanding” would have sufficed for his misdeeds out of his love for him. But it was the “consensual decision” of the party’s elite body – the Governance Advisory Council (GAC) – that Obasa must go, as a source within the party’s topmost hierarchy made this magazine to understand. “Obasa ti se awon agba” – literally Obasa has offended the elders, he said.
Another source however added that it could yet be the interest of Mr. President that Obasa should go because he had committed what may be described as a “capital offence” in his (Tinubu’s) view. That was deemed to be the misdoing of Obasa with his “daring attempt to ignominiously tamper with any of Tinubu’s cherished legacies in the state”. This, along with his cause of infringement against the elders, has been taken for his offence of breaching the allegiance to governance creed in the state. Likewise, the allegation of misappropriation of Assembly funds would seem to hold for a gross misconduct impinging on integrity of the state’s institution.
In matter of his offences against the elders, two discerning issues may stand out. The first would seem to be his contempt for the seated GAC members and high calibre dignitaries at the presentation of 2025 Appropriation Bill before the State Assembly by the Governor in November thereabout last year. The source said: “You are a media and I want to believe you were also at the Assembly on that day. So it will not be a news if I told you that you needed to see how the speaker kept the elders waiting for hours, even including Mr. Governor”, and he made no pretence to give any impression that it was not deliberate. Even if he had any personal issue with the Governor and he would want to engage in power show with the independence of Assembly’s authority, having the party leaders on seat should have informed his restrain in such circumstance. But I should say he was power drunk”.
Another APC stalwart in the state would later corroborate this magazine’s finding albeit after the impeachment. Speaking to Channels Television, Ogboni Fuad Oki, a renowned ‘enfant terrible’ of the Lagos progressives’ family, rather said the impeachment was “coming late” because Obasa’s “ways cannot checked and corrected” any longer. He also alluded corroboratively to the cold reception of the party leaders at the Budget presentation. He said: “I think Obasa’s removal was coming late for any discerning mind; events in the last three months indicated that Obasa’s days were numbered. In the last 18months, there have been signs. Don’t forget the event that happened on the day Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu presented 2025 Appropriation Bill. Not only was the Governor kept waiting for over four hours, but all the leadership of the party and all dignitaries who went to witness the epoch event were kept waiting for over five hours without apologies”.
It is also believed that Obasa’s speech on that day, where he said he was also “qualified” to be the state governor could have been held against him in evidence that he deliberately held the leaders in extreme disdain. “I am not too young or inexperienced to be governor and I am more qualified than some of those people who are there”, he said.
However, as some observers had posited, if the Oki’s trace of the Obasa’s faceoff with the Governor back to 18months referred to the disagreement over the list of commissioners-designate, he could not have presented the “right picture” of that incident. Many believed he had the support of Asiwaju for that. “I think he had the backing of Mr. President in that because not a few GAC members had an axe to grind with the Governor in that”, a source confirmed. Some pundits could have held that to be the origin of the drum beat to which Obasa could have been dancing. One could therefore say perhaps he failed to be cautious of when the beat could stop.
But doing all he had been accused of afterwards, Obasa would seem to have a basis for it, going by a reliable finding. A source presented as one of his close political ally who spoke to this magazine in Agege about late December on condition of anonymity said that the Speaker could as well be “deliberate” in his deeds because he was trying to show his displeasure with the manner the leaders and the Governor “connived to slight” the Assembly with the manner they handled the suspension of Alimosho Council Chairman, Hon Jelili Suleimon from office. However, not a few observers queried how that could connect to the LCDA killer Bill the Assembly brought up. They concluded, therefore, that the ex-Speaker could have misdirected himself by drawing the party elite into the victims of his anger and it was doubtful if he would get away with it.
When the immediate predecessor of Governor Sanwo-Olu was denied a second term ticket, his central offence was that he deviated from original Blueprint of Lagos Development Plan. The governance matter held for his misdeed in this regard included, foremost, the destabilisation he brought to the already settled PSP model of refuse collection, which had obviously become a rewarding legacy of widespread mutually beneficial economic empowerment to the party faithful and Lagos public. That should suffice that no head of any arm of government with exception of judiciary in Lagos will likely survive a harsh backlash against any ignominious attempt to tamper with any resounding legacy of Tinubu’s governorship era, especially the three he had personally identified to the public as his “greatest” “great” and “favourite” legacies respectively. The first is his succession planning for governorship seat of Lagos. Second is the matter of creative ingenuity of the state’s internally generated revenue. The third is the creation of additional 37 local governments, which have come to stay as Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs).
For the avoidance of doubt about this; once in a media interview over a decade back, Tinubu explained the underscoring factors that made these legacies dear to his heart. Asked: ‘What will you consider to be your best legacy in 8years of your administration? He Answered: “My best legacy is the financial engineering of Lagos State, especially to bring financial autonomy to Lagos State and eliminate wastage and mismanagement. That was just one aspect of it. (However) my greatest legacy is Governor Babatunde Fashola. I identified and endorsed him. That was when my corporate background as a recruiter and talent seeker for Deloitte came to play… The creation of local government was my favourite because the processes are clearly stated and well-articulated” – parenthesis is this writer’s.
Thus in clear term, even if Obasa’s governorship ambition might be pardonable for merely jumping the gun in the race for the next cycle of succession order for the seat, the attempt to kill the LCDA legacy could not have escaped the President’s will to wield the big stick or call it capital punishment. The noise and upset generated by the “Killer Bill” had been explained in the opening serial and in context of that, the President told him that he had gone beyond his brief. “At this stage, the matters of local government is beyond you”, Tinubu reportedly scolded Obasa.
As revealed in the first serial, the Bill to deny elections into the 37 LCDAs was shown to be entirely the Assembly idea – in metonymy for Obasa’s project anyway. And since the feelers from the Assembly remained that elections would not be conducted for the LCDAs after the party leaders’ intervention and after the hue and cry of relevant stakeholders which informed the second public hearing, it thus became a matter of Obasa against the Lagos APC. To him, by implication, the GAC was deemed not relevant any longer.
Of course, “everyone was sceptical and cautious in holding Obasa solely responsible for the killer Bill because you do not know whether he was carrying out the President’s wish”, a high ranking party chieftain told this magazine. Being the eyes of Tinubu in the government structure of the state, it could not have been out of place to think so. Thoughtfully, to reasonably hold too, it could as well be President Tinubu’s idea of a new order about the LCDA in tandem with his own policy of local government reformation with the autonomy in progress and for which only him Mr. President had taken into confidence. To think along this line should not also preclude the fundamental questions that will also come to the discernible minds that: whatever of such President’s idea to stop elections for the LCDA public offices, why would he want to put only Obasa into confidence for such a big issue of public importance? If the perception of being the highly favoured by Tinubu to be his only confidant for the matter had made the strength of Obasa’s to so act in the alleged repulsive manners he done, he would be presenting himself as a “Doer”, not a “Reader” of politics and to act on that premise would be his greatest undoing as it were eventually.
If he were to read the politics at all, if not rightly, he would have understood that Governor Sanwo-Olu should have been the first and greater stakeholder for the President to take into confidence in a new order for the LCDA if the chairman of GAC would as well be deemed less important to the Assembly Speaker. But Obasa read it wrongly that the Governor had fallen out of favour with President Tinubu for his purportedly perceived romance with and sympathy for the Lagos ‘Oranmiyan Dynasty’. So he chose to do politics with that.
It could therefore be clear to good readers of Lagos politics that Obasa was at his own game of self-play. But how his informing cause to think the reverse to running the LCDA with appointed Executive Secretary would help his governorship ambition was now the mystery to resolve. Thus in the statement of a member of the State Working Committee of the party, “he has committed the blunder of overrating his worth to Asiwaju”.
In significant view of this statement by Civics Weekly, Obasa may have exhibited his shallow understanding of the politics of Asiwaju Tinubu regardless of any claim to being a close aide and ally. What is to be implied here is that Obasa would seem to be bereaved of the idea of how Tinubu had built the formidable structure of Lagos progressives around the state’s elite. This is a story for another edition. What is to be understood here is that at any time the chips are down in matters of Lagos politics, the decision of this elite body – which goes beyond the composition of GAC – will always override the interest of Tinubu.
In 2011 when Tinubu was not forthcoming clear to them on his decision whether to give then Governor Raji Fashola the ACN ticket for a second term, it took Olowo-Eko in company with two other emissary of the elite to embark on a nocturnal journey to Bourdillon to hand over Fashola as their consensus preference on the eve of the party’s Primary ‘Selection’. How they did that by pacification that included a claim to ‘standing surety’ for the governor’s continued good behaviour was immaterial.
Likewise in 2019 when the incumbent Governor Akinwunmi Ambode would be denied the APC ticket for second term, it was the decision of this elite body, which even the intervention of President Buhari could not help to influence Tinubu to dissuade from carrying it out. The revered Pastor Adeboye, GO of the Redeemed Christian Church of God could not help either. He reportedly told him: “my hands are tied”. Rather, like the biblical Pontius Pilate, Tinubu washed his hands off the fate of Ambode to be decided by the party members (allegorically the party leaders) through direct party primaries.
The first sign to come that Obasa could have been dancing while the beat had stopped was the information to come out that elections would be held in all the 37LCDAs about 24 hours to the arrival of President for the December vacation. It vitiated the Assembly’s adamant ground. The reported swiftness with which the GAC Chairman raised the issue with Asiwaju was one factor many pundits held for how the party leaders might have become impatient to “get rid of the nuisance and to have 32 out of 39 members successfully executing the impeachment should suggest to everyone that the Lagos elite were unanimous in their resolve to put the errant speaker where he belonged”, a personal aide to a member of the party elite told Civics Weekly.
The members indeed placed their ground of action on a series of alleged misappropriation of the Assembly funds by the Speaker. That being a possible material fact to the extent they might have undisputable evidence for it as so outlined, and especially that the Speaker had once been a guest of the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) on it, not a few observers believed that the underlying cause was more political than their claims. The presence of heavy security at the Assembly from the early hours of the day under which his countercharge was executed would also suggest a premeditated action from the hands of state authority. It further suggested the underneath power game underscored by overall political acrimony in what was being passed for an internal affairs of the legislatures only.
The question that remains to answer is what could yet be the next step for the now ex-Speaker? Civics Weekly remains on the trail of the issue for an answer.
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