Politics
Tension in Lagos Assembly as Obasa storms plenary today
There are speculations that there might be a showdown at the House as the former Speaker, Mudashiru Obasa, on Saturday claimed he remained the Speaker of the House.Obasa was removed by the majority of House members on January 13, 2025, following allegations of misconduct and financial misappropriation. He was subsequently replaced by the Deputy Speaker, Mojisola Meranda.
Today’s plenary will be the third session presided over by Meranda since Obasa’s removal, with the former speaker absent at the last two sittings.
Speaking on Saturday, Obasa who had been outside Lagos since the saga at the House, said he still remained the speaker, and asked the lawmakers to follow the “right way” to remove him from office.
The former speaker also denied the allegations of corruption brought against him by the lawmakers during his removal, describing the alleged financial misappropriations as “impossible.”
Responding to questions from newsmen shortly after he addressed his supporters, Obasa insisted that he remained the Speaker.
“My status in the house? I believe strongly I am still the speaker until the right thing has been done. If you want to remove me, remove me the proper way and I will not contest it.
“I’m a Muslim and I believe in fate. But let’s do it the way it should be done.”
When asked if a legal battle was in the offing, Obasa responded, “You will know. It’s a matter of time.”
Obasa also spoke to a huge crowd of supporters at the Speaker’s Lodge, 47, GRA Ikeja Lagos.
He said, “I thank you for your support and dedication. I will take this advantage to debunk the allegations that were circulated and raised about me
“Is it possible to construct an ordinary gate with N16 billion? It is not the wall of Jericho or the wall that demarcated the United States of America and Mexico.
“How can they say we bought one Hilux bus for N1 billion each and that we bought 40 pieces for N40 billion? I am not disturbed or perturbed and I am not afraid. I will debunk all the allegations levelled against me by the House.
“I have not done anything wrong. I have been a lawmaker for over two decades and I am the longest-serving lawmaker in the House.”
In a notice issued from the acting Clerk’s office on Sunday, staff members and legislative aides were advised to come to the complex with a means of identification.
The notice said anyone without a valid ID would be denied entry into the assembly premises.
“Regarding management directives, all staff members and legislative aides must present valid identity cards to access the House premises. Please remember that entry will be denied to anyone without a valid identity card,” the short notice read.
Police pledge peace
The Lagos State Police Command has also said it will maintain order in the state irrespective of what transpires at the assembly on Monday.
The state Commissioner of Police, Ishola Olawale, in an interview with our correspondent on Sunday, said as much as the police had no business inside the assembly, it was his duty to maintain the calmness outside the assembly and everywhere in the state.
According to him, there won’t be any breakdown of law and order in the state. “That will not happen. I don’t see any breakdown of law in the state and if there is, it is inside the assembly and I am not allowed to enter the assembly. But outside the assembly, there won’t be any breakdown of law and order in Lagos State, in whatever location because that’s my job as a policeman.”
He added, “People will genuinely move about with their businesses, but anybody congregating anywhere to foment trouble will be decisively dispersed, and if they don’t (cooperate), they will be arrested if they conduct themselves in an unruly manner. Everyone has the right to assembly but there is also what we call law and order.”
The police also denied invading the residence of the former Speaker.
Obasa had on Saturday accused the Lagos CP of leading policemen to invade the Assembly and his residence on the day of his removal.
He alleged that over 200 policemen invaded his residences in the Agege area of the state and at the GRA, blocking the gate and preventing members of his family from going out of the house.
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“My children did not sleep in this house on that day because they were locked out, and my wife kept inside — house arrest,” Obasa said while addressing a crowd of supporters at the Speaker’s Lodge, 47, GRA Ikeja, Lagos.
But the CP stated that Obasa’s claim could be easily investigated from the residents without even hearing from him.
“The man lives within an estate, so that means before you get to his house, you must have breached the gate of that estate. There are gatemen in the estate, why don’t you find out? 200 policemen? How many policemen do I have? Have you asked that question?” the CP queried.
Ishola also said the police had no business at the assembly as they were not authorised to be in the hallowed chambers.
“Whatever happens there (in the assembly) has nothing to do with the police. They have ways they check themselves in and I don’t believe anybody who has no business inside the assembly is allowed in. They have their sergeants at hand who coordinate the conduct of the assembly.
“The law does not permit me to supervise or even intervene in what happens inside the assembly. It has nothing to do with me as a policeman,” the CP added.
According to him, Lagos is calm and “it’s my job to keep it calm and that’s what I’m going to do, that’s what I’m doing.”
GAC meeting
Obasa and the Governor’s Advisory Council are reportedly scheduled to meet with President Bola Tinubu on Wednesday.
A source privy to the development also told one of our correspondents on Sunday that the meeting was part of efforts to proffer a solution to the political differences between Obasa and other lawmakers in the Assembly.
“Efforts are underway to reconcile Obasa with his colleagues. Apart from his meeting with the president when he arrived in the country last week, he is scheduled alongside the Governor’s Advisory Council to have another meeting with the president on Wednesday to discuss the impeachment. Politically, both Obasa and the GAC are answerable to the president, so it is his position that they will both abide by at the end of the day.
“However, the lawmaker is unlikely to resume a session at the Assembly complex on Monday,” the source said.
According to the source, this was due to the tense situation occasioned by his removal.
“For now, Obasa has no plan to resume the session at the Assembly complex on Monday. Since there is an ongoing effort to reconcile them, that is likely to happen before he attends the session. As you know, the situation remains tense, and his attendance at the Assembly could escalate into a serious issue.”
The source who dismissed claims that the speaker could explore legal options added, “There are no plans to challenge the impeachment in court. The focus instead is on finding a political solution to the matter.”
Meanwhile, President Tinubu’s spokesperson, Bayo Onanuga, could not confirm that GAC and Obasa would be meeting with the President this week.
He also noted that Obasa was not at the Presidential Villa last week to see Tinubu, contrary to reports.
According to him, some ministers, who were also billed to meet Tinubu last week, could not see him due to the President’s tight schedule.
By Okey Maduforo Awka
The former member that represented Anambra East and West Federal Constituency Chief Chinedu Obidigwe has denied a social media handle where he was said to have made Prof Charles Soludo the Governor of Anambra state.
Obidigwe further stated that the report did neither emanate from him or from his Media Aides urging the party not to believe what he called attempt at setting a negative agenda in the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA).
Obidigwe who is an Aspirant of the party for the Anambra East and West Federal Constituency accused enemies of the party being sponsored by opposition parties to creat problems .
According to the Media Assistant to Obidigwe Mr Dominic Okagbue in a statement;
“The attention of Hon. Chinedu Benjamin Obidigwe has been drawn to misleading and unfounded claims/propaganda being circulated on various social media platforms through a pseudo account, alleging that Obidigwe said he installed the Governor of Anambra State, Prof. Charles Chukwuma Soludo, CFR, as Governor in 2021”
“We wish to state, without any iota of equivocation, that such a statement never emanated from Hon. Chinedu Obidigwe. It is a desperate move by his political enemies who are bent on tarnishing his image as a tool and technique to advance their unmerited aspirations”
“Obidigwe, in 2021, was merely an electorate with just one vote. Even though he voted for the Governor and APGA, the question remains: can one man’s vote make a Governor?”
“Governor Soludo was elected and made Governor through the collective votes of Ndi Anambra, both in his first and second terms. We therefore call on the reading public to disregard such rumours and treat them as faceless and unfounded allegations geared towards the character assassination of an innocent man” he said.
A former Kano State Governor and leader of the Kwankwasiyya Movement, Rabiu Kwankwaso, says northern political leaders conducted a deliberate assessment of potential allies before settling on Peter Obi as the most capable partner to prosecute the 2027 presidential campaign.
He dismissed concerns about a hidden power struggle between his camp and Obi’s.Politics
Kwankwaso made the disclosure in an interview on Arise TV on Monday, offering one of his most detailed accounts yet of how the North-Southeast political alliance within the NDC was formed.
“I looked around together with our leadership in the north to say, okay, who do we think is capable? Who can come and work together with us honestly so that we can move this country? Along the line, we realised that Peter Obi is at the forefront of it. That’s why we all accepted to work together,” he said.Political candidate profile
Kwankwaso, a two-term former governor of Kano State and the presidential candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party in 2023, leads the Kwankwasiyya movement, a grassroots political force with deep loyalty across Kano and parts of northern Nigeria.Nigeria travel guide
He left the NNPP amid internal disputes before joining the NDC alongside Obi earlier this month.
Obi, a former governor of Anambra State, ran on the Labour Party platform in 2023 and drew massive youth-driven support across the South and urban centres, though he did not win.
Both men formally joined the NDC on Sunday, May 3, defecting from the crisis-hit African Democratic Congress.Politics
At the party’s national convention on Saturday in Abuja, Kwankwaso backed the NDC’s decision to zone its 2027 presidential ticket to the South, describing it as a step toward fairness, healing and national cohesion.
Responding to a question about whether the alliance concealed a quiet rivalry between both camps, Kwankwaso argued that friction between principals and their deputies was a product of greed, not structural tension.
“The problem people are having, especially leaders, is that they are too greedy to the extent that they begin to have issues. There is so much to do. You don’t have to fight your deputy,” he said.
He said his record as a former deputy speaker of the House of Representatives, and later as governor of Kano State, showed that political partnerships could hold under pressure.
“I had an opportunity to work with my speaker and we worked very well. I was in Kano for eight years despite the difficulty of my then deputy governor. We were able to work for eight years amicably to the extent that I handed over to him,” he said.
Kwankwaso extended the argument beyond his personal experience, saying the same principle applied at the federal level.
In the Senate and other places, in the NDDC, we worked amicably with people. There is so much to be done and that’s why you have even ministers, other executives, advisors and so on. I don’t see from my experiences of the past why deputies or vice would fight with the president or governor,” he said.
He grounded the alliance in Nigerian political history, tracing a lineage of productive North-Southeast partnerships from the first republic to the present.Nigeria travel guide
“Right from the beginning, this sort of alliance has been in existence. Now we are going back to what Tafawa Balewa did during their time,” he said.
He also referenced the collaboration between former Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa and leaders of the NCNC, as well as that of former President Shehu Shagari and his vice president, Alex Ekwueme, in the second republic.
“So also in the second republic, immediately after the war, our leaders, Shagari and others, worked very closely with the southeast, with Alex Ekwueme as his vice president. They are our friends. We want to work together with them,” he said.Politics
Kwankwaso also noted that subsequent administrations had shifted power-sharing away from the South-East, a pattern he suggested the current alliance was correcting.
“There was a change during the third republic where for many obvious reasons an election was annulled and the government under the military decided to bring in Shonekan from the South-West.
Even after that, the military and other leaders worked together and brought in Chief Olusegun Obasanjo from the South-West again. Even Bola Tinubu probably is a beneficiary of all that,” he said.
He was emphatic that the choice of Obi was not driven by regional sentiment alone.
“It wasn’t just because we are going to the South-West just because of the South-West. No. We realised that Peter Obi is at the forefront of it and that’s why we all accepted to work together,” he said.Political candidate profile
The movement of both men into the NDC has triggered a wave of defections, with senators, House of Representatives members and political blocs aligned with their former coalition gravitating toward the new party, rapidly reshaping calculations ahead of the 2027 elections.
The alliance pairs Kwankwaso’s northern grassroots structure and disciplined voter mobilisation with Obi’s national youth engagement and urban electoral momentum, positioning the NDC as one of the main opposition platforms set to challenge President Bola Tinubu and the ruling All Progressives Congress in 2027
Former Kano State Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso has dismissed suggestions that his exit from the African Democratic Congress has created a damaging split in the opposition.
He said he and Atiku Abubakar may yet work together before the 2027 general election.
Kwankwaso spoke in an interview on Arise TV on Monday, responding to concerns that his move to the Nigeria Democratic Congress alongside Peter Obi had effectively divided the opposition into two competing blocs ahead of the polls.
“Now, we may still work together before the election. I personally, and I think even Obi himself, decided to leave ADC not because we are fighting with Atiku or anybody there. We decided to leave that party because we realised that there are some issues,” he said
He said the ADC was contending with three major unresolved problems that he believed would make it difficult for the party to field candidates, without specifying what those issues were.
“Whether they will be able to field candidates in that party or not is just a matter of time. It’s not like we had a primary election,” he said
The remarks come after Atiku recently claimed on Arise TV that Kwankwaso’s popularity was confined to Kano State and further divided there by Governor Abba Yusuf.
Atiku, who is seeking the presidency on the ADC platform, also described himself as the most popular politician of northern extraction, saying none of his contemporaries, including Kwankwaso, Aminu Tambuwal and Nasir El-Rufai, commanded a voter base across the North as wide as his.
Kwankwaso did not engage the slight directly, but made clear he bore no grudge.
“Politics is just like a game. I’m not fighting anybody and I’m not expecting anybody to fight me. I have no issue with that. I think we are past that level now,” he said.
He challenged those predicting a vote split in Kano to wait for the election result before drawing conclusions.
“Let’s wait for the election and see whether votes are split in Kano or not,” he said.
Kwankwaso also acknowledged a history of working with Atiku, recalling that he served as the former vice president’s northern coordinator during the 2019 presidential election.
“There was an election in 2019 in Port Harcourt. He won the election. I was his coordinator for the north. We worked for him,” he said.
He traced his broader relationship with Atiku to the 2015 APC presidential primary in Lagos, where he placed second behind Muhammadu Buhari, with Atiku third.
By Okey Maduforo, Awka
The Anambra State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has expelled 30 members of the party for instituting legal actions against the party.
The affected members include some aspirants for the National Assembly, and their expulsion may disqualify them from participating in the party’s primary elections.
Disclosing this shortly after the meeting of the State Executive Committee (SEC) of the party, the State Publicity Secretary, Dr. Sir Valentine Iyiegbu, told reporters that the decision was in line with Section 21, Subsection 5 of the party’s constitution.
“The party discussed those who took the party to court, and many of them are contesting for the House of Representatives tickets of the party,” he said.
“The matter comes up tomorrow, and the SEC stated that what the party constitution stipulates would be followed, which is outright expulsion from the party under Article 21, Subsection 5.”
“The SEC actually ratified their expulsion because they did not exhaust all the internal avenues provided by the party to resolve their grievances,” he added.
Iyiegbu noted that the only reprieve available to the expelled members would be for them to withdraw their court cases.
“It is only when the matters are withdrawn from the court that the party can consider listening to them,” he said.
Speaking on the party’s primary elections, he explained:
“In the case of those contesting for the tickets of the Federal House of Representatives, all the eleven positions have aspirants, while for the Senate, the three positions are also being contested. The screening committees were here to perform their duties,” he noted.
The party also ratified the appointment of a five-man Primary Elections Committee headed by Sir Izuchukwu Okeke, the State Organising Secretary of the party.
By PETRUS OBI
Frontline aspirant for the Aninri/Awgu/Oji-River Federal Constituency seat, Anayo Onwuegbu, has successfully completed the screening exercise conducted by the All Progressives Congress House of Representatives screening panel in Abuja ahead of the party primaries scheduled for Friday, May 15, 2026.
Speaking after the exercise, Onwuegbu expressed satisfaction with the screening process, describing it as a reflection of the party’s commitment to internal democracy, transparency, and credible leadership selection ahead of the 2027 general elections.
The aspirant, who is seeking to represent Aninri/Awgu/Oji-River Federal Constituency under the platform of the APC, stated that he remains focused and prepared to continue to offer quality representation to the people of the constituency.
According to him, “The process once again highlights our party’s commitment to internal democracy, transparency, and the emergence of credible leadership as we prepare for the 2027 general elections.”
He reaffirmed his dedication to the development of the constituency, pledging to serve the people with commitment and purpose if elected.
The APC House of Representatives primaries are expected to hold nationwide on Friday as aspirants battle for the party’s tickets ahead of the 2027 elections.
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