Lagos Assembly Crisis: You Can See Who Is In Charge, He Can Hire And Fire – Bode George

Former Deputy National Chairman of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Olabode George, has condemned the reinstatement of the Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Mudashiru Obasa.

Naija News reports that Obasa was on January 13 impeached by 32 of 40 lawmakers over allegations of corruption.

Upon removal of Obasa, who had been Speaker since 2015, the lawmakers promptly replaced him with his deputy, Hon Mojisola Meranda.

Despite the seemingly firm stance of about 35 lawmakers that Obasa would not be reinstated following the intervention of political leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC), they eventually succumbed to pressure on Monday, March 3, 2025.

Speaking in an interview with Tribune, Bode George maintained that Obasa’s reinstatement as Speaker was an embarrassment.

He said: “If they are deceiving themselves, they cannot deceive the general public. If you are the leader of a party and the party was going to go through a procedure, and they accused the Speaker of a lot of inappropriate activities – financial and otherwise – shouldn’t you even address those issues? Since he didn’t do it, there is no need for Obasa to respond to the allegations levelled against him. The same people came back and reinstated or re-elected him. It is an indecent approach to what democracy is all about.

“If you were accused of certain misdemeanor openly and people went through a process by which they said enough of you, if you want to come back, you know you will have to defend yourself first. It’s already in the public domain but there was an order that he should be reinstated since it is a private enterprise. Do you return people like that in a democratic dispensation to override whatever others had been saying? Is it that those Assembly members didn’t know what they had been talking about before they removed Obasa, or they are absolutely acting like a military organisation? When I look at it on the political side, our party (PDP) has a system; our party has procedures. Sometimes, you can have these procedures to reassure the public that we are better managers when we are challenged.”

He stated that the ruling APC is not a proper political party, stressing that the party is a congregation of strange bedfellows.

George added: “You can see who is in charge. It’s a private enterprise, he can hire and fire. Is that democracy? You can’t have your opinion to explain yourself based on the demands from your constituency. I have said several times that APC is not a proper political party but a congregation of strange bedfellows. It was a Lagos State House of Assembly matter, do they have a caucus? Does the executive of the party in Lagos have a caucus? When I say caucus, it’s the unifying group, like the equivalent of the Board of Trustees at the national level, do they have that? The caucus would meet, the Speaker himself would be a member, the deputy Speaker would be a member of the same caucus, the state chairman and the state secretary would be members, and then some elders from some other local governments would be members of that caucus representing those local governments, like they claimed they have a GAC, what is the effect of the GAC? So what are their own approaches to resolving the problem? Nothing. Nothing, they got divided.”