By BASHIR ADEFAKA
Governorship Candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the March 18, 2023 in Lagos State, Architect Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, has insisted that the Governor Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu administration in the state spent N200 million on pre-election matters mainly legal fees.
He was speaking while featuring in a Morning Show interview of Arise News from London studio on Saturday November 25, when he had to stand up to the challenge posed the Lagos State Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Mr. Gbenga Omotosho, to bring forward his evidence that such money left the treasury of Lagos State on approval of his principal.
The Labour Party’s governorship candidate said it was no controversy that the governor did as, according to him, all the facts and figures required as evidence were obtained not by wishful imagination of he that alleged but from the Lagos State government itself through its website.
The DEFENDER reports that Lagos State Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Gbenga Omotosho, had earlier last Tuesday November 21 appeared on the Arise News Morning Show interview where he said the allegations by the opposition were fake.
“First there is a matter that was mentioned on this station before I came, which I consider very serious, that Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the governor paid lawyers legal fees from the state treasury. I saw here now categorically that there was nothing like that. It’s all false. It’s fake. It’s from incredible sources.
“There was something that was brought up and Mr. Sanwo-Olu refused to approve it because the person who may have prepared the paper is somebody who may is not knowledgeable about such matter. You can’t spend state fund on political dispute or political matters in whatever guise and Mr. Sanwo-Olu knows this very matter. So, the Attorney General and Mr. Sanwo-Olu, they refused to pay that money and it was not approved.
“If anybody has any proof that a dime of the state’s money left the treasury on this particular, the person should just bring it out,” Omotosho challenged from the side of the state government, communicating the denial of allegations of unlawful use of taxpayers’ money by his principal, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu.
Popularly called GRV, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, an architect, activist and politician, was told before commencing his comments about the submissions of the Lagos State Commissioner for Information and Strategy who was challenging that anyone who had proof should bring it forward, saying there was nothing like the allegation by him about N200 million spent on legal fees as the state never spent any such amount and that he (GRV).
Asked if he was satisfied with what both the governor and his commissioner had said or if he thought they were just playing to the gallery, GRV spoke to the contrary.
“Well, there is one thing we all agree on, which is the fact that public fund cannot be used to handle personal legal issues that Mr. Governor finds himself in. It’s that something that we all agree on and I think that is an abuse of public trust.
“Now in terms of evidence, the evidence is directly from the Lagos State Procurement Agency’s website. And after he (the Commissioner) came on your show we put out a statement where we quoted where we got those numbers from. Directly you can download it from Lagos Procurement Agency’s website and it was in January 2023. We literally took snapshots of the documents, we have the downloaded hard copy of the documents.
“The brazen way that they come on air and lie is really unbecoming and is real abuse of public trust because, we did not manufacture these documents. If you look on my social media, we put the website where you can go, Lagos State own website.
“And let it be a reminder that these are awards that have been paid. These are not budget estimates. These are payments that have been made, the companies or institutions that are getting payments are listed, the description of what these payments are for, is listed it’s not just the legal services. I mean Mr. Funsho Doherty has done a brilliant work in analyzing funds that are so padded. I have focused on things that are impeachable.
“So, for instance, taking money to spend on decoration of campaign offices, which you are seeing in the June report, taking money to spend on delegates, organising political delegates congress, which is in the July report, so these things are listed. There is no controversy, they are listed, the website, the link, where you can go and download all these, is there.
“We noticed that they have started adjusting some of those documents. So, we have somebody that is on the site time stamping the documents in real time throughout the day. So, we know for a fact that these documents are genuine because they are from Lagos State itself.
“And it points to the brazen way that they’ve established that the state treasury is linked to their account and that there will be no consequence. That is why they can brazenly put these on there without expecting any consequence to come out it. And that is something that we as a people must address in time of such hardship.
“And if you notice from when I started campaigning, the key foundational part of my campaign was transparency and accountability. And you have to do that on public trust.
“In a situation where N200 million – and that is what we’ve seen – is being spent on pre-election matters, I didn’t want to imagine what was spent on the actual tribunal and all of that. But these are documents that are gotten freely from the Lagos State own website.”
Asked what specific steps he would recommend, in the face of denial by Governor Sanwo-Olu and his commissioner Gbenga Omotosho, to independently verify and scrutinize government expenditure to ensure fiscal responsibility, even as he was also asked to respond to the N162 million claimed to have been spent on restoration of water supply to Oba of Lagos Palace, he made his positions clear.
“I believe that our traditional institutions need to be developed, need to be prompt up, I mean you go to England, you go to Buckingham Palace, you should grandeur. It is an investment actually because this is how you attract tourists to come into the state to see something different,” he approved whatever they claimed they spend on the Oba of Lagos palace.
However, he continued, “The government can argue and try and wriggle its way out of a lot of things, whether it is N7 million on fans that they then say was N1.9 billion mistake, that is all well and good. What I’m trying to focus on, and this is extremely important, is when you take public funds to deal with political and personal matters, right?”
“A government has its policy, has its agenda. If its agenda is to investment institutions to prompt up the palace to create a nice, beautiful surroundings for our traditional elite, I believe that, that is fantastic. It is an investment, something that can be linked to tourism. But, again, the focus must stay on the fact that public funds are for the benefits of greater Lagos and for the benefits of people of Lagos. They cannot be used to settle legal fees of the governor or decorate or carryout things for a political party.
“Political parties have means by which they generate funds and they can justify how they spend it. They sell nomination forms, they have means of income. And it should be unacceptable that taxpayers’ money, people that wake up early in the money and are paying their taxes via payee, these are monies that will now be used to settle another man’s legal expenses, it’s completely unacceptable.”
On whether he saw that the payments found out so far reach the level of him calling for Governor Sanwo-Olu’s resignation, he came bluntly out.
“If people want to be stealing commonwealth and act in interests that are not in the interest of the people of Lagos, we cannot also join them to normalize it. Right? In England, an MP would spend 200 Pounds that was inappropriate and he would resign. Two hundred pounds, that is equivalent of almost N300,000. And these standards did not come from nowhere; people push to create a new normal and that is what citizens must do at this point.
“Again, we are looking at records that are on the state’s website. We have not carried out a comprehensive audit to actually see how people are spending money especially at a time when so many people are suffering, people are complaining about how expensive medicines are, inflations are at all time high because of governance. In the Ease of Doing Business, Lagos ranked number 20 out of 36 states. There is a lot of work that need to be put in to ensure that the people of Lagos have a good quality of life, and that also costs money, so we should be spending money judiciously.
“If a governor has gone against his oath of office and has bastardised public trust, if he is honourable, he would resign. And in the situation where he does not do the honourable thing and resign, the party would sit down and we would look at ways to start talking to the Speaker of the state Assembly to start commencing impeachment procedures. We cannot just accept this normal. We must do something about it.
“I always say that governance in democracy is a two-way street. We push this way and we create a new normal to a point where four years time, five years time, people will not think that this is normal to do anymore. People will think that ‘Your know, I have done this, so I should do the honourable thing and resign’. These are dialogues that are two-way street and must be ongoing and that is what we are pushing for now,” he said.
Adjustment
Asked about type of adjustment he meant, he said the government’s claim that the deputy governor’s office got N2 million and not N2 billion was the main one he was talking about.
“After Mr. Doherty came on air, we noticed that that document, the sum at the end was changed and those were adjusted. Now, whether they want to say it was mistake or not, they then now need to show us the accounts to say that ‘These different items came out on that same list and this N2 billion that was listed here, it was actually N2 million that went out’. And audit needs to be done.
“You see, governance must be transparent and accountable. The fact that we are just looking at procurement awards, which is after the fact of payment as opposed to line-by-line items of budgets and transparency that we get with the Federal Government, is because they are line-by-line items that we could see that the President was looking for in the Supplementary Budget, certain amount of billion for cars, certain amount of billion to renovate Doddan Barracks, certain amount of billion for a Yawt.That is not the case in Lagos State. So, we have to go with the Procurement Agency.
“So, these numbers we have downloaded and, like I said, we have time stamp to constantly watch to make sure that this evidence is not tampered with because they came on to say we should show the evidence like we just pasted things from nowhere. We got the documents the Lagos State government itself.”
About whether the legal fees of N200 million have now been adjusted, GRV said no. “As at yesterday, it’s still there”.
Then asked what that means if the figure is still there on the website as a public document without any utteration and the Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Gbenga Omotosho could come out to say no such money went out, Gbadebo said:
“Honesty I just feel it is the level of ineptitude and just the idea that, ‘We can lie and get away with it, there are no consequences. Whether it’s election we should violence to ensure that we stay in.”
