I Don’t Need Any Petition To Impeach Fashola -Ikuforiji, Lagos Speaker Whose idea was the Lagos State Assembly chambers project which some of your members describe as one of the best in Africa? The idea came from everybody in the house as led by myself. Before I became the speaker, the gallery of the old chamber had become inadequate. Most times, when we had very serious things to do, you would find out that people were sort of choked up in the chamber and the gallery. There was a proposal to extend the gallery to accommodate almost a 100 more people and it was to cost about N98m to get it done. But when I became the speaker, I looked at it and I felt additional 100 seats might not be good enough for Lagos House. Our people are getting more interested in the process of governance and a lot more people are getting interested in the legislature. I felt we needed to create more space and encourage our constituencies to participate more in the business of legislation. I felt that instead of the additional 100 seats, we should have an alternative. I called a young friend who is an architect. He had already done something extra-ordinary for us by building the speaker’s residence at an unbelievable cost of N57m. The same house would go for N150m or N200m and nobody would raise an eyebrow. I told him what I wanted of a chamber and he sketched it and we eventually came up with this design and I asked him to cost it. He came with a cost that was so reasonable that we couldn’t do otherwise. How much? It was just a little less than N400m. We were to spend about N100m for additional 100 seats and now, for N400m, we would have a fantastic new cha mber that would accommodate 500 guests and would also accommodate more people and be a showpiece for Lagos State and would be a thing of joy for the members, staff and the public. I told the governor and we decided to go for it. W e went through the processes and we sent it to the ministry of works and all that. From time to time, I had to invite the members to tell them what we wanted to do. Virtually, every one of us contributed to the new chamber. You have the unique record of running a house for the third time as speaker… We have one or two other third term speakers. As a matter of fact, there is no one who has led a parliament in Nigeria as big as Lagos State parliament as long as I have led it. There are those who have led other smaller parliaments. It shows that you are very ‘powerful’? It is not by power. What do you really mean by being powerful? It is not a boxing competition. It is about legislating. It is about administration. It is about how much you can work with others and carry them along. It is about how acceptable you can make yourself to others. It is about how much you can sell yourself to others and accept others for who they are. The legislature is the most volatile and difficult arm of government in our present dispensation. Every member of the parliament is a potential speaker of the parliament. The speaker should always remember that. The speaker’s seat is not the most comfortable for people who easily forget themselves or where they are coming from. As the constitution is today, it is so easy to get rid of the speaker. That is an aspect of our constitution that still requires modification. It is not good for our democracy. The seat is too slippery. It is not in the interest of the nation. It makes it impossible to have a mature and well dedicated legislature. Talking about the House being volatile, how have you been able to manage it? I have been very lucky. This is Lagos. We all know that Lagos is the centre of everything good in Nigeria. I let my colleagues know that we are not just representing our constituencies; we are representing the black people. What you have started seeing just recently concerning good governance is a direct result of what Lagos had been over the last 14 and half years. Most other states started copying from Lagos particularly about 2007. Now we have many more states where the government is more responsive and responsible than they were before. When you are in Lagos, you know that you are representing the crème de la crème of the Nigerian society. If 40 of us are representing such a crème of the Nigeria society, is it not a great honour? Is it not worth taking into consideration before we do anything? Would we want to shame ourselves before these Nigerians? Don’t we realise that we are just one person representing about half a million people de la crème? I am lucky to lead the crème of people. I have to give everything I can. I have to be more tolerant and show more passion and I have to be more considerate. I have to think of the larger society. I must imbibe every good quality. What about the EFCC case which you are still facing? It is normal. It is part of the game. As a leader, you will definitely have trials and tribulations. As a believer, I consider some of those things as God’s way of building you higher. But this time around, it is a corruption charge against you. Which one among the creations of God gets tested more? It is the human being. Animals are not tested. The trees are not tested. Man was made in the image of God. Among men, the chosen ones are the ones who go through tougher times more than every other group of human beings. Look at what Jesus went through. See how we compensated him for his efforts. Look at the Holy Prophet Mohammed. Look at what he went through so many years ago. If I am not a prophet of that magnitude, my experience and what God has done for me has made me a chosen one in the lower category. My father had buried eight children before me. I came and broke the jinx and I stayed alive. In my little place where I came from in Epe, nobody succeeded in a general election before me. I became the first to win an election. It was another jinx I broke. In the secondary school I attended, nobody made a Grade One in the school certificate examination. But in 1975, 105 of us took the school certificate exam; I was the only one who made a Grade One. I broke the jinx. I came to the House. Against all odds, I became the speaker in 2005. A year and half later, I had to go for the general election in my home town and nobody had ever won an election back to back in my town. But I still broke that jinx. I came back to the House and I became the speaker again. It is also the first time in the history of Lagos that it is happening. I even broke my own record by becoming a third term speaker. What else do I need God to do for me? If trials come, so be it. I know I will get over it. Some others have had greater trials. But these allegations are basically criminality; money laundering is a criminal offence… Which political leader in the history of man didn’t go through trial? Is it Mandela, or Awo? Even my leader here, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu went through trials and he is still going through trials. Political leadership is the most sophisticated and difficult form of leadership. If others before me went through those things, I will go through it. if many of them came out triumphant, I will also come out triumphant. But they said you stole money… I have not stolen any money. That is a straight forward thing. It is stupid for anybody to think that the speaker in a legislative house like ours needs to be pursued by an agency like EFCC. If there is any part of government where you don’t need any regulatory body, it is the legislature. No matter how much of spiritual powers you possess, you cannot slap members of the House twice. If you steal from their funds, the members will beat you to stupor. EFCC will even beg them to leave you. You don’t need any EFCC to pursue the speaker of the House. The members will deal with him. The in-house magazine in the parliament reported that some ‘mischief makers’ want to ‘strangulate’ your position, who are these ‘mischief makers?’ I don’t know them. If I knew them, I would have strangulated them myself. God knows them and God will deal with them. After representing Epe division twice, the powers that be decided to uproot you to Ikeja to stand election so that you continue as speaker even as so many people protested against it… No powers that be uprooted me from Epe. The man who took the seat I left in Epe is right here with us. How many of them had been milling around me since after the 2007 election? They believed that I wasn’t going the third term or I might go for Senate or federal House of Representatives. Younger guys were coming around me and even buying baskets of fish for my wife. At the end of it, there was no way I would tell them that I would be the one to go for the seat for the third term. It is not a sign of good leadership. Sacrifice should be made when required. The leadership asked me to go back to the house and I told our leader that I won’t go back through Epe. It wasn’t fair. They voted for me twice and I didn’t want it again. There were some other younger ones who were nursing the ambition and I didn’t want to disappoint them. I have been living in Ikeja so I decided to contest through Ikeja. But you couldn’t have won if not for the godfathers… The thing about Nigeria is that we enjoy speculations and we carry rumours and we build mountain out of a molehill. As at 2011, I was not the only member of the House that crossed from one constituency to the other. But I am the only one you know. My colleague from Lagos Island did so and nobody talked about him. But because it is me and my name attracts attention and noise, everybody talks as if it hasn’t been done. You had the opportunity to go to the Senate or the federal House of Representatives to pursue higher positions instead of staying put here for your political gains. What is wrong in going for political gains when I am a politician? I am no more a teacher. I am a politician and I must look for political gains. I still prefer to serve at the level of the state where the influence I have can be peddled better; where my work can be seen clearer than going for the money that I will find at the national level. It is said that you are here to protect the interest of a powerful godfather. Look, I have told you my own interest. I don’t know why you want to see it in any other light. My interest is to be as relevant as possible politically. I and the governor of the state are like five and six. Really, at the moment? That is the truth. But you have not always been good friends with Governor Raji Fashola. There is no way a good governor can do without the speaker of the House. He can do without the senators from his state but he cannot do without the speaker of the House. But we learnt you are just tolerating each other… But what is life all about? It is about tolerance. If you say I am only tolerating the governor, he is only tolerating me too. It is part of life. My colleagues are just tolerating me too. Why did you sponsor some petitions against him back then? Do I need to sponsor a petition against the governor? You don’t understand what is woven in the seat of the speaker. One of the things you have to understand is that in the Lagos House, we know our onions more than our colleagues in other states. Most people would think it is because of money. I am one of the poorest speakers in the country but I am very powerful because I am the speaker of Lagos State House of Assembly and it is a very strong House. I don’t need to sponsor a petition against the governor when I am the speaker. Whatever is in the petition, I can direct a committee to go after those things without a petition. Don’t you know what the constitution says about the House? Those are stupid insinuations. If we wanted to impeach Fashola, we didn’t need to generate any petition against him or any other governor at all. The constitution is clear. In any case, if you were in my position, would you have wanted to impeach Fashola? In 2009, he was the only governor of ACN in the entire nation. We were the party perceived as the real opposition. Would you as a politician, be an opposition party without a governor out of 36 states? What reasons could I have given the people of Nigeria for removing Fashola? It is because you are more loyal to the former governor than Fashola… As a Lagosian, if they tell you that I had to remove Fashola because I was loyal to some other person who is even in the same party as Fashola, would you buy that party for a penny? It would have been senseless. They just played on peoples’ intelligence. Some people would listen to anything just for the fun of it. Even if Fashola was bad, I still wouldn’t have removed him. It would have been the most senseless thing to do. Fashola brought some other governors. If we had removed him, what do you think would have happened to us? Our party would have been forgotten by now. There are people who reap from where they didn’t sow. Their own dividends come from rancour. That is where they make profits. They go to town and tell them lies. Our governor was doing well and people loved him. What would I have gained by removing him? We learnt that you are also being investigated for some shady business you did in the US before you came back home. If I had done any dirty business even in the House, EFCC is strong and capable enough to have investigated this House for three and half months on the basis of a petition which claimed I embezzled N7bn. EFCC didn’t see that I embezzled any money. How many Nigerians at this level, have you found in a third term in office being investigated and not found to have committed atrocities? Shouldn’t you have stepped aside while the investigations are going on? It never crossed my mind and it will never cross my mind. When Bill Clinton was being investigated for even what he did, he didn’t step aside. If we have to step aside for every allegation, there would be no Nigerian leader in office. Every one is being alleged to have done something every minute. The petition for which I am being prosecuted was written in a sheet of paper without an address and somebody is suggesting that I should step aside. For what? You reportedly said that nothing will stop you from becoming the governor of Lagos State, why did you say so? I told you, when it comes to Ikuforiji, the noise is larger than what it should be. Some of your colleagues came to meet me and asked me questions about Nigeria and sallah. They asked me what is next for me since I have been speaker for three terms. They asked me if I wanted to be the governor of Lagos State. In my normal self, I told them that it is only God that crowns. I told them how I struggled to be speaker in 2003 and how I ended up raising the hand of the man that became the speaker and how I wept then. I told them that when it was God’s time in 2005 and when I least expected it, I was made the speaker. With benefit of hindsight, I told them I thank God I wasn’t speaker in 2003 but in 2005. I told them that if God says my turn will be in 2015, nobody can stop it. But I also told them as a believer, I don’t believe in over speculation. I even told them I wanted to be president of Nigeria but I don’t know when. We also learnt that somebody who accused you of sleeping with his wife even came to attack you… Let us be realistic, if I was dating you, do you think that your husband would be smart to come to the house to attack me for dating you? A man, who at any time, has at least three or four well armed policemen surrounding him? I didn’t know about the story until after three weeks when my daughter drew my attention to it. I got to the House of Assembly and I called the clerk and told him what I heard. He said he had learnt of it weeks back. He told me that other members knew. I asked him if there was any lady by the name they mentioned in the reports, working in the House. He checked and found out that nobody had such name. There was only a guy who had the name and he had left the services of the House three years ago. If I had seen the story in a serious newspaper, it would have given me some concern because serious minds would have read the story and it might have tarnished my image. Some of my colleagues wanted us to respond to the story but I kicked against it. If we had responded, we would have been helping to disseminate the rumour. Some people see me and think I am an alfa. They think I am so holy spiritually and I wouldn’t kiss a woman. If they now heard I was dating a woman, many more women would want to try and come to me. How many people do you think would believe your claim that you are the poorest speaker in Nigeria? I don’t expect anybody to believe me. That is the truth. But it is clear. If my state has a budget of N500bn every year, we have even run N2trn in the last two years. I head an arm of government that is most feared. Nobody would expect that I am less than N2b or N5b rich. But that is not my life. I know God created me for service. The smile I put on people’s faces are more important to me. I am not saying I am poor. By virtue of my position, you should know certain influences I can peddle that can also get me money. We don’t share public funds in Lagos State. The governor never called me to give me money out of the budget money, so where are people expecting the money to come from?
Posted on: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 18:06:39 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015