The crisis which followed the removal of Mudashiru Obasa from office as speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly appears to have drastically chilled. With a resolution of the Assembly supported by a majority of the members, Obasa was removed on January 13, 2025 while his then deputy, Mojisola Meranda was immediately elected and sworn-in to take his place.  Whether or not the legislators appropriately applied their powers to change their speaker is an unnecessary argument because Section 92 of the Nigerian Constitution1999 specifically empowers them to elect a speaker and a deputy speaker of a House of Assembly from among themselves.

Thus,the election or removal of such officers ought not to give room to violence.  Indeed, many analysts correctly made the point that the fate of Obasa was sealed as soon as the House resolved to remove him because the Constitution did not require the House to give reasons for the removal. Yet, Obasa had repeatedly claimed that he was not properly removed insisting that until the right thing was done, he remained speaker of the House. Perhaps Obasa was fighting a lost battle as he had no legal provision to back-up his claims. Interestingly, it was not only Obasa that lost out;a greater loser remains Nigeria’s bastardized democracy. In other democracies, it is not only the letters of the law that matter, the spirit of the law always matters too.

Nigeria, has since 1999 had a stunted growth partly because of rigid adherence to the letters of the law at the expense of the spirit of the law. It is not every aspect of governance that law covers; quite often, conventions are used to complement the law so that the real intentions of the drafters of the law are met. At the point of Obasa’s removal, the House was on recess to formally resume on February 18, 2025. If so, who convened the hurried meeting during the recess and what procedure did such a convener follow? This probably explains why Oluwagbenga Abiola, the vice Chairman of Agege LGA, where Obasa is from, argued that the Lagos State House of Assembly was “still on recess.”

Democracy presupposes the rule of law which makes it expedient for everything to be done according to law. As Bracton, the 13th Century British jurist and author once said, the King must be subject to law because it was the law that made him King. The average Nigerian politician inclusive of elected legislators need to know more of this and reduce their penchant for impunity and political rascality. Whether written or not, the legal power to do anything must never be experimented upon. A legislative Assembly where majority of members were agreed on the removal of Obasa didn’t need to be in a hurry or to heat-up the polity in carrying out its wish. Waiting for Obasa to be out of the country to act behind him portrays ample timidity; ordid the legislators have a hidden agenda?

It is a matter for regret that Lagos legislators allowed negative narratives to envelope their act. One can only hope that the rumour that two of them,Lanre Afinni and Sylvester Ogunkelu were reportedly held by security agencies for allegedly breaking into the speaker’s office in search of the Mace is incorrect. If so, the public ought to be told why two legislators were invited for questioning and why many of them stormed the office of the relevant agency to effect their release? Why should a simple vote for or against the removal of a speaker involve the arrest of two members? In a democracy where the majority carries the day on an issue, why were police invited to the House and who initiated the invitation?

The point to be made therefore is that the law empowering legislators to appoint their speaker among themselves did not envisage that violence or the use of police operatives would be part of such an internal selection process among people who claim to be ‘honourables.’ As Obasa was to later argue, when former speaker Jokotola Pelumi was removed he was in attendance and police operatives were not invited. The same according to Obasa was done when deputy speaker Adefunmilayo Tejuosho was removed. Although the law did not specify that speakers must necessarily be present at a session before they can be removed, did the law say it should be done in their absence? If the convention was extended to Obasa, he would have witnessed his unpopularity by the overwhelming vote against him. All the tension he created would not have arisen at all as he would have been humbled.

The allegation that Obasa was removed because of misappropriation of funds, high-handedness and lack of transparency in the management of the Assembly’s affairs constituted a major mistake made by the Lagos legislators. It would have been enough for the Assembly to merely pass a resolution supported by two-thirds of the members stating that they no longer wanted Obasa. They did not need to give other reasons, but having given reasons for their decision, natural justice demanded that they offered the accused a chance to defend himself especially as some of the allegations bothered on criminality.  As law-makers, they are deemed to know that they cannot be the prosecutor and the judge in any criminal case. They also ought to know that removal from office is not the punishment for misappropriation of public funds. It is therefore wrong for Lagos legislators to have made the public believe that Obasa committed grievous offences just to attract public support for his removal. 

Considering that criminal offences were raised against Obasa, it leaves a bitter taste to end the case with just his removal as speaker. Part of the irregularities Obasa was accused of included that he spent 80 million as allowances during the training of wives of 20 lawmakers in Dubai.Were the 20 legislators who submitted the credentials of their wives for the training not aware of the impropriety of the assignment? Many other allegations are flying about. For example, should the House not probe the alleged spending of N17 billion to construct a gate that leads to the Assembly complex and N200 million on a thanksgiving service?When will the allegation of N15.6billion allocated for office construction be investigated in view of the fact that the existing facilities are perfectly functioning?

Many state legislators in Nigeria behave like marketing agents pursuing anyone they are paid to pursue but that should not happen in politically sophisticated Lagos. Unfortunately, the Obasa episode is pushing some analysts to begin to think otherwise. How are we sure that the handling of N44billion allocated for vehicles which legislators should benefit from was not the real issue at stake?Otherwise, where were the current activists in the Assembly when Obasa reportedly kept the state governor waiting for over 4 hours just to present a budget to the Assembly?  Not only was the governor kept waiting for more hours than make sense, the leadership of the ruling party and all invited dignitaries were also allegedly kept waiting. And when ‘emperor’ Obasa eventually surfaced in the chambers, courtesies were reportedly not extended to anyone. Yet, no one at the time recognized the need to call the speaker to order. Instead, they overlooked a kind of monster that later intimidated them to a point of no return before scampering around for bogus allegations to secretly remove him. 

Obasa is not the only speaker to have been removed by legislators and his case is not different from what has happened elsewhere in Nigeria. In my records, those removed since1999 include Maduagwu(Anambra), Modu(Bornu), Ayuba(Plateau), Usman (Niger), Edoro and Okiye(Edo), Oluomo(Ogun), Orji (Abia), Isenah(Bayelsa), Shalla and Kamb (Kebbi), Falgore and Atta(Kano), Oloyelogun(Ondo), Nwanzunku(Ebonyi), Gbana and Kente(Taraba), Garba (Jigawa), Igbuya (Delta), Oloyelogun (Ondo),Ikyange (Benue), Ibrahim(Gombe), Muduru (Katsina),Emeziem (Imo),Oluwawole and Aribisogan (Ekiti). They were removed either for not getting enough goodies for their members or had legislators materially mobilized by the governor to remove their speaker. 

Lagos the centre of excellence ought to lead in strengthening democracy for which a free press is inevitable. But for 2 years now, activities of the State House Assembly have been sheltered in secrecy because the Assembly had placed a ban on media coverage of its activities. Unknown to the legislators and their other colleagues as well as even some judges who often disallow the media in their courts, it is against Section 22 of the Constitution to so act. Indeed, that section mandates the media to make all organs of government (no exception) accountable to the people. Accordingly, all eyes are now on the new Lagos speaker to redress the situation.