After several hours of interactions with all parties, Lagos House of Assembly panel inaugurated to investigate the Speaker, Mudasiru Obasa, of corruption and financial misappropriation has cleared him of all allegations and that the claims against Obasa were false.
The nine-man panel added that the allegations leveled against Obasa bothering on the operation of 64 bank accounts with different banks were intended to tarnish the image of the speaker and paint the House members as being corrupt.
Obasa was cleared after reports stated that he allegedly approved expenditure for programmes and activities in the house unilaterally, and spent N258 million to print invitation cards for the inauguration of the 9th assembly, approved N80 million as estacode, purchased 11 Hiace buses and 80 cars for the lawmakers within a year without due process.
The committee chaired by Victor Akande, representing Ojo constituency, presented its report on the floor of the house on Monday and stated that the speaker adhered strictly to the due process, as outlined by the house rule, in all financial dealings.
Akande stated that the Committee found that the speaker has only one account with Ecobank, which he opened in 2007, but that the account is dormant and that the Bank Verification Number (BVN) quoted for Ecobank was not correct.
“The Speaker did not have multiple accounts with Ecobank, the BVN ascribed to Wemabank does not belong to him and the companies attributed to him in Wema Bank are not correct. Out of the 14 accounts attributed to him for Zenith Bank, only six belong to him and only two are active.
“The Companies ascribed to him in Zenith Bank does not belong to him. The Deputy Speaker did not attend any trip in Dubai as against the reports of SaharaReporters,” he added.
According to him, it was found out that the purchase of vehicles for the lawmakers were ratified by the Fund Management Committee (FMC) of the House in both the 8th and 9th assemblies.
The chairman revealed that the purchase of Toyota Prado and Land Cruiser cars for members were approved by the FMC and the Lagos State Public Procurement Agency (PPA).
“The purchase of 36 Toyota Prado and 6 Land Cruisers were budgeted for and approved by the PPA. The allegations of spending N64 Million for social media influencers were not true.
“The USA trip was attended. Only eight Hiace Buses were purchased for committee works and staff buses. Contrary to the claim of N258 million spent on printing invitation cards for the inauguration for 9th assembly as only N61 million was spent for the event and N1.1 for invitation cards.
“The facility management company in the House does not belong to the Speaker. The alleged N10 million paid to the speaker’s wife is not true,” Akande added.
While reading the committee recommendation, Akande directed the clerk of the house should begin the process of investigating how the house documents used by pressmen in the reports leaked and bring the erring staffers to book immediately.
The chairman further recommended that the activities of the house should be digitalised for proper record keeping and monitoring to prevent future leakage of documents in the state.
After reading the recommendations, Akande further said that vote of confidence should be passed on the speaker of the house since investigations conducted on him proved he was never involved in any corrupt activities.
In conformity with the committee directives, a lawmaker representing Badagry 2, Setonji David, moved a motion for the adoption of the recommendation of the committee, and this was supported by Temitope Adewale (Ifako-Ijaiye constituency 2).
The whole members then agreed with the recommendations based on a voice vote conducted by the Majority Leader of the House, Hon. Sanni Agunbiade, who acted as the Speaker during the sitting.
