By Oguwike Nwachuku
Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State was to have been impeached today, Monday, February 4. Yes, you heard me right.
Members of the Lagos State House of Assembly set aside today, to determine whether Ambode will continue to remain in his office or not.
They did ahead of Sunday, February 3 meeting at the instance of the All Progressive Congress (APC) leadership masterminded by the party national leader, Bola Tinubu.
After the meeting on Sunday, the lawmakers seem to have changed their mind or rather were compelled to change their mind by the real architects of the impeachment agenda.
Last week, Wednesday, January 30 to be precise, a group of protesters staged a protest at the Lagos State House of Assembly against the planned impeachment of Ambode.
Comprising mainly members of the civil society organisation the protesters said removal of Ambode would disrupt peaceful conduct of the general elections, particularly in Lagos. The message got sunk in the ears Ambode’s traducers.
With the protesters’ placards and banners bearing varied inscriptions, they showed their displeasure regarding the move by the legislators to impeach Ambode.
One thing though is certain, whether Ambode is impeached or not, the lawmakers would have succeeded in bringing to the fore, the re-branded widening gulf in the already known face-off between the governor and his political godfather, Tinubu and other unseen beings.
On January 26, 2019, the publisher of The Source magazine, Comfort Obi wrote in her column – Ambode: Nigeria’s Most Powerless Governor. It was a piece I consider a ravishing inquest into the emerging conflagration in the political chess board of Lagos State.
If you are not careful, you may assume the piece is anti Ambode. Only few persons with deep sense of humour and who appreciate the work of satire will see it as an attempt by Ms. Obi to use Ambode as linchpin to critically evaluate what has become a growing list of woes ravaging our dear Lagos known as “Centre of Excellence”.
Ms. Obi’s repeated reference in the essay to the former governor of Lagos and now, national leader of the APC, Tinubu, makes her narrative more interesting to read, and also provides an insight into what the future of the state portends should the situation continue.
If one reads Ms. Obi’s article under reference carefully, one would be able to appreciate the latest development in town, the plot to impeach Ambode.
It was no longer news that the Lagos State House of Assembly was desperate to remove the governor ahead of the May 29, 2019 hand over prior to the parley Tinubu arranged for them on Sunday.
On Monday, January 28 to be precise, the Lagos lawmakers signaled their intention to impeach Ambode, citing the usual legislative jargon – gross misconduct – and in this instance, for failing to bring before them the 2019 appropriation.
They wanted Ambode to appear before them today, Monday, February 4 to substantiate all allegations that constitute the so-called gross misconduct they have leveled against him.
For instance, at the said January 28 plenary, the lawmakers accused Ambode of spending the 2019 budget that had not been laid before the Lagos House of Assembly for approval.
Twenty-eight lawmakers out of the total 34 who spoke during plenary called for Ambode’s impeachment while the remaining six gave the governor the opportunity to resign if he fails to satisfactorily explain why he should not be impeached.
Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Mudashiru Obasa, canvassed need for his colleagues to give Ambode a chance to appear before them to defend himself on the allegations.
He said the House would give Ambode only one week to appear before the legislators to defend himself or face impeachment proceedings.
To underscore the seriousness the Obasa-led Assembly attaches to the impeachment plot, he advised his colleagues who insist on getting the governor impeached to start gathering signatures.
Before they rose from the day’s plenary, the lawmakers agreed to summon the governor and three of his Commissioners – Finance, Economic Planning and Budget, and the Attorney General/Commissioner for Justice – to also appear today, Monday, February 4.
But the plot to remove Ambode actually started late last year, and again, Tinubu was fingered over the subterranean moves.
In October 2018 when it seemed the impeachment rumour had leaked, Obasa who is one of Tinubu’s valets swiftly moved to disabuse the minds of Lagosians.
Though Obasa said the lawmakers were not thinking of impeaching Ambode, the caveat, “if there are no constitutional breaches,” meant a lot.
He had said: “We have been alleged to have started an impeachment process on our governor.
“We are not embarking on any impeachment process. Mr. Governor hasn’t done anything to warrant such.
“Impeachment is constitutional. It is not an offence if we embark on it but there is no basis for it now. We will only do this if there is the need for it.
“We don’t need wailers to advise us on how we go about our duties. The process has no secrecy, it is done in the open.
“We are only answerable to the people of Lagos and the electorate that elected us.
“All wailers, this is to tell you that you can’t teach us our job. There’s nothing like impeachment for now let me put it that way. We are working in harmony with our governor to move the state forward.”
If you read Obasa’s lips carefully you will understand that Ambode’s impeachment plot was only put in abeyance pending when enough impeachable sins that can be supported by the constitution would be raked-up.
Until some civil society members took to the roads on that fateful Wednesday, stomping through the streets and anchoring at the premises of the Lagos State House of Assembly, the trending allegation was that Ambode was unilaterally spending the 2019 budget without approval.
To the masterminds of his removal plot, that was enough “sin” for Lagosians to call for Ambode’s head, particularly as they will think the governor is amassing wealth preparatory to exiting office on May 29 when he will cease to be in office.
But unless the Lagos Assembly lawmakers have sinister motives, or are not familiar with certain legislative procedures or rules, appropriations are mere notifications from the executive in form of a document about what the government intends to spend within a particular fiscal year. In most cases, what is being proposed or budgeted may not even be available in terms of liquid cash.
At the level of the federal government, and in most cases some states, where the executive and the legislature are on the same page on financial matters, spending by the government must not wait until the legislature has given approval to the fiscal year’s income and expenditure request.
I recall, once at the Senate, when late Dr. Chuba Okadigbo (of blessed memory), then President of the Senate, tutored most of his ignorant colleagues on the term “anticipatory approval”. The whole essence of anticipatory approval, Okadigbo explained, is to help keep the wheel of government running pending the legislative approval that will eventually come whenever that arm of government is ready to play its own role of budget approval.
The other sin against Ambode is that the lawmakers would want the governor to personally bring the appropriation bill to the House and lay it without delegating anyone. Really?
It is the right of the governor to so do, but who does that today when other official commitments are involved, and the constitution empowers the chief executive of the state to delegate an official from his office to do the same thing on his behalf?
During the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan, Nigerians saw his Finance minister and coordinator for the economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, go to the National Assembly on several occasions to lay the budget. What I do not know is whether the significance of the budget proposal was in any way diminished because the president did not personally present it to the National Assembly.
Lagosians are being fed with allegations of what Ambode did or failed to do by the same persons who connived to deny him governorship ticket for a second term, so as to get their support and then have the governor easily hounded out of office, ignominiously.
Unfortunately, nobody is talking about the allegations that the lawmakers are simply trying to box the governor to a corner and extort public funds from him for the purposes of electioneering.
It is often said that there is no smoke without fire. Even, there is bigger allegation that Ambode’s woes are compounded by his refusal to cede billions of tax-payers money to his masters for the election, and his refusal to heed such request is at the root of his current humiliation.
Matters are made worse for the governor when one recalls that those who work with him (or for him) are on the side of Ambode’s masters and constantly betray him because of the circumstances of their employment. That much one of his close aides told me at the weekend. “Only a few of Ambode’s aides are actually sympathetic to his ordeal, the rest are working for the man who owns Lagos and his allies, or so they claim,” he said.
The point is that in the executive, legislative and judicial arms of the Lagos State government, Tinubu has his interest well cut out. The Jagaban, like late MKO Abiola believes his hair should not be shaved in his absence, and so he goes all out to protect anywhere he has an interest. That is why Tinubu’s voice regarding the Ambode saga is the only heard now.
Most of the strong voices that campaigned for Ambode to be made governor in 2015 have suddenly gone mute.
That is why I was relieved reading the view of renowned scholar, Prof. Akin Oyebode, who said the APC might be sounding its death knell in Lagos State with the growing plot to impeach Ambode.
Oyebode told the News Agency of Nigeria: “The APC in Lagos seems to be making a death wish. First, you muscled out a performing man from a second bite of the apple. Now, you want to throw him under the bus which, quite frankly, amounts to an overkill.
“If they persist in this misadventure, the people will teach them a lesson which they will never forget in the coming election.”
Oyebode’s warning, like that of the civil society organisations before him, reverberated everywhere in Lagos and more importantly at Bourdillon hence the urgent intervention.
If you ask me, Ambode has acted very gentlemanly by being respectful to all manner of persons on board the train to destroy him politically.
I am beginning to compare Ambode’s loyalty to his masters with that of the embattled Deputy Governor of Imo State, Eze Madumere whose master, Rochas Okorocha, took all his support, love, loyalty and respect for foolishness, not even for granted.
Ambode’s sense of humility also tells a lot about his upbringing regardless of whatever anyone wants to say about him in the name of politics.
Even when they emerged from the meeting with Tinubu on Sunday, one could still feel the mood of a man under oath to respect his master in the face of humiliation and intimidation.
The forlorn faces Ambode and Obasa wore which they tended to hide behind Tinubu said it all about the beginning and ending of the impeachment hullabaloo or rigmarole.
In an ideal situation, the floor would have been yielded to Ambode, the governor and the chief executive of Lagos to tell Lagosians how the parley went, but that was not the case. It was also deliberate.
Tinubu’s theory on internal conflict mechanism in politics said nothing except that the impeachment plot was weaved in to further cow Ambode. The “go and sin no more” chorus from Tinubu to Ambode and Obasa, that followed with back slapping for the deputy governor and deputy speaker were all designed to round off the impeachment drama series that started late last year.
I do not know what is firing the instinct in the lawmakers but they need be reminded that what goes around comes around.
Except most of them are not ambitious and do not intend to go beyond being used as cannon fodders by their political godfathers, I would have said the ordeal Ambode goes through today could be the lot of any of them who aspires to be governor tomorrow, if the godfather syndrome they have unwittingly promoted continues to fester in Lagos.
We now know why the lawmakers are not alive to their core responsibilities in a state where many streets, including the ones where they themselves reside have metamorphosed from mere potholes to death trap ditches.
If the lawmakers are on top of their game they would have known that most of the laws that were enacted years back are being implemented in breach. Example is the wearing of crash helmets that virtually every Lagosian embraced during the days of Babatunde Fashola.
What of the restriction of movement for okada riders in certain places in Lagos that is no longer enforced because of political interest?
The last time I checked, the lawmakers have stopped attending to constituency projects and where they do such projects have been abandoned or completely forgotten.
What kills and is still killing initiative today in Nigeria, both in political and business circles, is the hypocrisy syndrome. The penchant to lick asses to belong or be carried along has been taken to alarming level. How unfortunate!
Tinubu is having his fun (and do you envy him?) because of pliable characters that call themselves politicians, including lawmakers whose sense of responsibility do not support the dream for Mega City that is Lagos in the nearest future.
I personally would want the lawmakers to be courageous enough to impeach Ambode at this time, barely a month to the governorship poll.
I want them to do so if Ambode did not make money available to them for their election and use that as yardstick to remove him. They should bring his impeachment on and see what the future of Lagos looks like.
Whoever says Ambode is a saint must be deceiving himself, but when has he become this bad, this pariah, that every politician in Lagos thinks Ambode is his or her problem?
Methinks the governor has been subjected to so many needless attacks lately that Lagosians should even begin to wonder what qualities his successor(s) must have to measure up to the demands of the lords of the manor called Lagos. That, really, is the future challenge for Lagos, its leaders and Lagosians.
