Lost all guises of sovereignty a.k.a. LAGOS

By SEYI CLEMENT

With due respect to Muiz, any suggestion that the GAC is independent of Tinubu is fallacious, and the notion that they represent the indigenes is farcical. The GAC is but a tool for the perpetuation of the Tinubu hegemony in Lagos.

The headline seems defeatist, you might say, but the events that cumulated in the resignation of Hon. Meranda and the re-election of Hon. Obasa would suggest otherwise.

In 2012, I was in a conversation with a friend, a chieftain of the then ACN during the Fashola 2nd term saga. He said something that affronted my democratic sensibilities, and for a long time, I refused to countenance the veracity of his statement. I could not accept the ignominy of his assertion. How is that possible? I asked myself. Not in Lagos, I mused to myself! I felt conflicted with myself. What he said challenged my belief in Lagos and debased us as Lagosians.

Then in 2018, history repeated itself. This time, we were amid the Ambode 2nd term saga. The outcome of the saga confirmed what my friend said in 2012.

The comment that affronted me so profoundly was his posit that anyone elected on the platform of ACN is but an employee of Asiwaju, to be used and disposed of at the pleasure of Asiwaju. In 2018, it would appear that Ambode did not get the memo. It would also appear that the 27 renegade APC members of the Lagos House of Assembly and Hon. Meranda did not get the memo either.

Lagos APC, like its progenitor ACN, belongs to Tinubu in fee simple, as the lawyers will say. It is not a political party. It is a private enterprise, and the sole shareholder and director is Tinubu. It exists for the pleasure of Tinubu, and all those elected under the Lagos APC are employees of the Asiwaju Private Company, APC. The question is, where does that leave us Lagosians?

What the APC is running in Lagos is nothing short of a government of Tinubu, by minions, for Tinubu. The painful thing about this perversion is that the interest of Lagosians has become secondary to that of Tinubu. More disconcerting is that some Lagosians who should have guarded against this perversion either slept on the watches or have joined in the creation and/or maintenance of this perversion. The web of self-deceit weaved by some of these Lagosians to defend the indefensible abrogation of the will of the Lagos State House of Assembly at the behest of Tinubu is unfortunate. The abrogation of the will of the House was an affront not just to the institution of the House but also a slap in the face of Lagosians, who mandated these members of the Assembly. It says loudly and boldly to Lagosians, “You may have elected these people as your representatives, but they are there to do Tinubu’s bidding, nothing more, nothing less.”

It was bad enough that the hopelessness of the Assembly in the face of the imperiousness of Tinubu was confirmed. After all, this was no secret. What I find most disconcerting was the length Tinubu and his minions would go to hide the hands of Tinubu in the humiliation. For the uninitiated, at one point in time in the saga, the GAC called on the revered duo of Papa Bisi Akande and Otunba Segun Osoba to adjudicate on the House of Assembly imbroglio. An intervention that was roundly condemned by most Lagosians as an insult.

I read an interesting commentary by my brother Dr. Muiz Banire SAN, suggesting that Lagosians should be thankful for the intervention of the duo. He submitted that the invite was by Lagosians in the APC represented by the GAC and not Tinubu. He gave two reasons for the acceptance of the assignment by the revered duo, both of which are questionable at best.

The first was that the invite was precipitated by some of the Lagos elders who felt that the intervention of these two was necessary, either because the Lagos elders were unable or unwilling to intercede in the saga. I will deal more with this supposition later in this article, but it suffices to say that this supposition is questionable at best. According to information at my disposal, the members of the Assembly were implacably opposed to the restoration of Obasa, as were our elders represented by organisations such as De Renaissance Patriots Foundation and others. So, contrary to Muiz’s suggestion of unwillingness or inability on the part of our elders, they were fully in support of Hon. Meranda, but that was not the solution that Tinubu wanted.

The second reason posited by Muiz was that the duo wanted to prevent the descent of Lagos into chaos given its importance to the Yoruba race. Unfortunately, nothing can be further from the truth. The truth is that PBAT could not countenance the idea of the House of Assembly asserting its independence, particularly where Lagos indigeneity is involved. The decision had nothing to do with the position of Lagos within the Yoruba nation, but everything to do with the position of Lagos in Tinubu hegemony.

With due respect to Muiz, any suggestion that the GAC is independent of Tinubu is fallacious, and the notion that they represent the indigenes is farcical. The GAC is but a tool for the perpetuation of the Tinubu hegemony in Lagos. The invite was “teleguided” by Aso Rock. Tinubu recognised the strength of the feelings of the indigenes on this issue and did not want to be seen to ride roughshod over the feelings of the indigenes. It was a classic, “hand of Esau, voice of Jacob.” If the duo had succeeded in restoring Obasa, this would have deflected any accusation of “babasope” away from Tinubu.

The decision to restore Obasa had been taken by Tinubu before the alleged invite was extended to the duo. The confidence with which Obasa re-entered the country, declaring that he was still the Speaker, the non-removal of this security detail at any time during the saga, and his triumphant entry into the House to preside over a plenary of 4 says to all that a decision had already been made to retain him as a speaker even before the alleged intervention of the duo.

The unfortunate losers in this hegemony are the ordinary Lagosians, whose interest and mandate have proven to be secondary to that of Tinubu at best and inconsequential at worst. What we have in Lagos is effectively state capture by Tinubu.

We Lagosians must rise up to put an end to this hegemony. We must push against this state capture for the sake of our state and our children. We must wrestle back our sovereignty.

Seyi Clement
Lawyer Commentator