By Primate Charles Odugbesi
I sincerely hope that President Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu will not veto this position this time. Right now he has a lot to handle on the national level. He should allow the will of the people to prevail this time in Lagos state.
The present Speaker has been in the assembly since 2003 and has been a speaker since 2015. That means he has been in the house for about 20years (5 terms) and out of those five terms, was a speaker for two terms. It looks to me as we do not have enough competent hands at the assembly in Lagos State and even his constituency lacks competent youths. This would be his sixth term, no problem. It means he has put all the leaders in his constituency in his bag. He wants to go again as the speaker, why not, since all leaders and members of the Party in Lagos state are mumu, including me.
My candid opinion to him is that he should go back to the back seat and offer a leadership role since there is a vacant post which Hon. Osinowo (Peperito) of the blessed memory left behind. It shall amount to a slap in the faces of all of us in the Party to let this go unstopped. He has stayed for too long in that place. I don’t know how people are not tired of staying in one place for too long.
The fact that he is not a Lagosian is not anything to talk about. Are we just waking up? Somebody has been in a position for twenty (20) years and has even won another four years, and we say he is not an indigenes. To me, by virtue of the fact that he has served this state for twenty years is enough to qualify him as an indigene. But let him not fight a fight that is not honourable. Let him pass the baton peacefully to another colleague and offer quality support for that person.
As their stock in trade, he must have cowed the younger legislators and threatened to deal with them if they did not support him. I hope those people will refuse to be intimidated because they are not in that place on their own, some people sent them there.
And this is a call on those upright leaders of the Party in Lagos state, because I know there are still some upright ones, to stand and make sure this threat to democracy is not allowed.
I think time has even come for the people to come in with some suggestions to moderate things in this state. Every good thing that ever happened in this country always starts from Lagos. If the President has a maximum of two terms, Governor has two terms, even if legislators can go as many times, the speakership should also be limited to two terms.
Let me rest my case here for now.
Primate Charles Odugbesi, JP, former State Secretary, (AC., ACN., APC.), writes from Ikorodu.
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