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Politics & Governance

Lagos Assembly hammers three errant Council Chairmen

For brazenly flouting Local Government Guidelines governing their activities as alleged, the Lagos State House of Assembly on Tuesday, suspended three prominent local government council Chairmen.

The three Chairmen who were suspended by the House through a voice vote during the plenary shortly after Bisi Yusuff (Alimosho 1) raised a complaint against one of them are as follows:

Ogidan Olaitan of Lekki Local Council Development Area (LCDA), Suleiman Jelili of Alimosho Local Government and Tajudeen Ajide of Surulere Local Government.

The House said it could no longer continue to watch the council chairmen flouting the state’s local government guidelines governing their activities.

Yusuff, who is the chairman of the House Committee on Commerce and Industry, told the House how Olaitan had allegedly acted in an unruly manner and also disregarded the assembly members.

He complained that Olaitan accused the lawmakers of carrying out an oversight function on a memorandum of understanding in relation to an issue that arose from a resettlement programme in Lekki.

The lawmaker further said that the council chairman had total disregard for those in his domain whom he was elected to govern, according to NAN reports.

Commenting, Mr Fatai Mojeed (Ibeju-Lekki 1), accused Jelili and Ajide of questioning the House for investigating the councils based on the petitions raised by their counsellors.

Mojeed then urged his colleagues to suspend the chairmen pending the outcome of the investigations on the allegations made against them to serve as deterrent to others.

The Speaker of the House, Mudashiru Obasa, while speaking on the issue, noted that the House had received petitions from many councillors in the state against some serving chairmen.

Obasa said the House could not continue to watch while council chairmen flout the laws that they were supposed to uphold.

“Total disregard for local government guidelines is something that should not be tolerated.

“We cannot continue like this. We can’t be breeding monsters in our local government councils,” Obasa said.

Obasa said it would not be ideal to gloss over the issues as it would be creating a precedence of disobedience to the law by council chairmen especially at a time the state was planning elections into the councils.

According to him, we have received too many petitions from their councillors against many chairmen, this is the time to take action.

The speaker directed the Clerk of the House, Mr Olalekan Onafeko, to write Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu and other stakeholders on the decision of the House.

RovingNaija recalls that the Chairman of Surulere Local Council, Tajudeen Ajide, was rumoured to have received a similar suspension from the House a few weeks back but he was reportedly saved by “higher authorities”. Some political analysts spoken to are wondering if the latest suspension of the trio is not consistent with plots to get Ajide out by all means due to his perceived inordinate political ambition.

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