The Fall of Obasa: What Lagos speaker’s sack says about Tinubu’s influence

The Lagos state house of assembly removed longstanding speaker Mudashiru Obasa on Monday.

A key ally of President Bola Tinubu, Mr Obasa became speaker 10 years ago on the intervention of Mr Tinubu, who governed Nigeria’s most populous state and Africa’s seventh largest economy between 1999 and 2007 and remains a powerful kingmaker till date.

State lawmakers accused Mr Obasa of misusing public funds and not demonstrating leadership. Femi Saheed, representing Kosofe Constituency, tabled the motion for Mudashiru Obasa’s removal, citing multiple allegations of misconduct, according to Premium Times.

Mr Saheed accused the former speaker of “highhandedness and disregard for honourable members of the House of Assembly”, and said Mr. Obasa’s leadership was marred by “intimidation and suppression of, and inciting members against one another”. More critically, he accused Mr Obasa of “mismanagement of funds and lack of transparency in his management of the House of Assembly funds”, and described his leadership style as “authoritarian and undemocratic”.

The motion scaled without opposition, and deputy speaker Mojisola Meranda was elected to lead the house, becoming the first woman to assembly’s first female speaker.

Mr Obasa, 52, started his political career as a local government councillor in Agege between 1999 and 2002. He became the member representing Agege state constituency I in the state assembly in 2007.

In Lagos’s top-down political order, where decisions often flow from a single power centre controlled by Mr Tinubu long before becoming president, Mr Obasa’s ascent to the speakership and his lengthy stay were unmistakably tied to Tinubu’s blessing – a fact the former speaker himself openly admitted.

During the inauguration of the Agege-Pen Cinema Bridge in 2021, Mr Obasa, narrated how he succeeded Adeyemi Ikuforiji as speaker. “Before I joined the House of Assembly, I started as a councillor here in this local government. Our first primary election took place in Airport Hotel,” he said, according to Punch.

“If not for his (Tinubu) intervention. We had about five delegates or six and about contestants. I had three (votes), the other person had two (votes) and another person had one and the person with one vote left to join the man that had two, making 3-3.

“If they had suspended that election, that would have been the end of it but because of his (Tinubu) intervention, it was resolved, there and there and that was the first time of Mudashiru Obasa in the Lagos State House of Assembly and without that there wouldn’t have been a speaker from Agege. Asiwaju, we thank you. God will bless you. God will continue to sustain you.”

In response, Mr Tinubu who was at the event, said Mr Obasa was the kind of “talent” the All Progressives Party (APC) sought.

“We, in APC, are seekers of talents. We don’t destroy talents, we develop talents, we fish for them, we refine them and give them the responsibilities,” he said. “That is what we find in Obasa, that is what we find (Gov. Babajide) Sanwo-Olu, that is what we find in (deputy Gov. Obafemi Hamzat.”

This legislative and executive combo, long before Mr Sanwo-Olu came, have led Lagos with minimal fiscal transparency. Accessing the state’s annual budget document remained difficult for many years.

Controversies

Lately, that relationship has been strained amid reports Mr Obasa is nursing an ambition to succeed Gov. Sanwo-Olu, a position President Tinubu’s son Seyi is also said to be eyeing in 2027.

A major schism came in 2023 when the Obasa-led assembly rejected 17 out of 39 commissioner nominees submitted by the governor, prompting the intervention of the Governor’s Advisory Council (GAC), an influential APC arm in Lagos. The speaker denied having problems with the governor at the time.

Last year, the assembly pushed a legislation to replace existing 37 local council development areas (LCDAs) created in 2003 by Mr Tinubu, when he was governor. Lawmakers led by Mr Obasa proposed reverting to the 20 local government areas recognized by the 1999 Constitution.

Supporters of the governor said Mr Obasa was discourteous in November 2024 when the governor presented the 2025 budget to the state assembly. They said the former speaker was irked by the likely backing of the state’s political establishment of Seyi Tinubu for the top office.

At a meeting in December, ThisDay reported President Tinubu openly scolding Mr Obasa, accusing him of disrespecting the governor. The speaker’s removal clearly indicates he has fallen out of favour with the president and the governor.

Funds misuse

But the most tangible allegation against him would be financial mismanagement, a theme that has featured repeatedly throughout his tenure.

In September 2020, a federal high court in Lagos froze the bank accounts of speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly Mudashiru Obasa, following an application made by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

At the time, the agency said the accounts were being investigated ‘for the offences of conspiracy, diversion of funds, abuse of office, and money laundering’. By 2023, Africa Report reported that the accounts were quietly unfrozen.

Monday’s ouster came a month after a nongovernmental group, Lagos State Anti-Corruption Coalition, accused the Lagos assembly of spending N17 billion to construct an entrance gate at the assembly complex.

Mr Obasa denied the allegations. “It is so funny. How much is the allocation of the Assembly in the whole year that we will decide to spend N17 billion on a gate? They even claimed that we spent N200 million on thanksgiving that did not hold,” he told journalists in December.

“We are aware that at a period like this when we are approaching elections in 2027, we should expect such things. I think some people are scared and I don’t know why.”