‘Sins’ that cost Lagos speaker his seat

Mudashiru Ajayi Obasa had his eyes on the governorship seat of Lagos when his colleagues booted him out of office on Monday.

Reports on Obasa’s interest in the coveted seat were discarded as mere rumour in some quarters, but the message became clearer after the Archbishop of Methodist Church Nigeria (Lagos), Most Rev. Isaac Ayo Olawuyi, indirectly drummed up support for the three-term speaker during the Lagos House of Assembly’s 22nd Annual Thanksgiving Service.

At the event which the former Speaker attended, Olawuyi had said in the interest of religious tolerance, Lagosians should elect a Muslim as governor in 2027.

“I also want to add that we have consideration for religious inclination in Lagos State. It would be 12 years in 2027 that we have been in the system together and we have been having Christians as governors. Now, it’s time to give our Muslim brothers a chance to govern us in Lagos State. We want to pray that when it’s time for the election, it would be a time for us to elect who will govern us in Lagos State effectively,” the Archbishop had said.

He went further to praise the former Speaker for his leadership and collaboration with the other arms of government, saying these have kept the state strong.

“You have been a true and sensitive leader with a big heart. You have proved yourself worthy. We pray that God will continue to use you to make us smile in Lagos and also grant you your heart desires,” he said.

After that event, the campaign for Obasa regained momentum while the former Speaker carried on with glee. However, he was impeached on Monday, about a month after that endorsement. For a man who lasted that long in a slippery political environment, how did such fate befall him? How did his adversaries get him?

According to reports, Obasa’s travail began after the Governor’s Advisory Council (GAC), the highest decision-making body of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Lagos reported him to President Bola Tinubu.

Putting it mildly, a chieftain of the ruling party who spoke off the record said, “The seemingly insurmountable walls around him started crumbling during the End-of-The Year break. His fate was sealed after our elders visited the president. That meeting nailed his political coffin.”

During the visit, insiders said top on the agenda of the GAC was the cold war between Obasa and Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu. Although Sanwo-Olu and Obasa have had a running battle, the matter came to a head during the 2025 budget presentation.

Obasa stoked controversy when he declared that he was not too young or lacked experience to run for Lagos governor.

He had said, “I am not too young or lacking experience to run. Those who have been before me are not better off… I have made it a personal task to mobilize people on the platform of Mandate, which some political detractors have misconstrued as being a selfish aspiration on the ground for me to become governor of the state.”

Making such remark on live TV and right in the presence of Sanwo-Olu had drawn the ire of the party leadership in the state and they waited for a ripe time to tender their grievances before their leader.

The chairman of GAC, Alhaji Tajudeen Olusi, was said to have started the discussion by reminding the president of how highly the governor’s office was when he governed between 1999 and 2007.

He reportedly told the president how disrespectful Obasa had been to Sanwo-Olu, citing several instances. Tinubu was said to have openly lashed the former speaker for not just disrespecting the governor but also the GAC and party elders.

Since that moment, the forces against Obasa restrategised and his colleagues who had collectively at random got him into the record books as one of the longest speakers in the country, finally turned the page on his enviable political career.