By SANWO-OLU CAMP BEHIND AMBODE IMPEACHMENT MOVES
With the open option of resignation or impeachment notice served on Governor Akinwunmi Ambode yesterday by the Lagos State House of Assembly over financial infractions in the State’s 2019 budget, it is obvious the troubles of the Governor who was unceremoniously denied a re-election ticket is not yet over.
Less than 35 days to the Lagos State Gubernatorial election, it appears all is not well with the camps of the incumbent Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode and Babajide Sanwo-Olu as it was alleged that prominent members of the All Progressives Congress loyal to the gubernatorial aspirant are behind the travails of the incumbent governor.
Inside sources at the Babajide Sanwo-Olu Independent Campaign Organisation and the APC secretariat revealed to BlackBox Nigeria that Governor Akinwunmi Ambode who was denied a second term ticket is particularly frustrating the campaign of his anointed successor despite being same political party, the All Progressives Congress. His inability to accept defeat and support Sanwo-Olu’s aspiration alongside traces of his funding the candidate of the main opposition party, Jimi Agbaje necessitated the moves by the Sanwo-Olu’s camp to get him removed.
Going back memory lane, the source said it is unfortunate that Governor Ambode is refusing to fund Sanwo-Olu’s campaign knowing that when he was faced with a similar dilemma in 2015, the current Minister of Works, Power and Housing, Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, as Governor, released hefty sums to him, in spite of the animosity between them.
“Fashola was not on talking terms with Ambode throughout the campaign but he did his part and what the party requires to ensure victory for Ambode. Unlike Ambode who is running after President Muhammadu Buhari’s re-election bid forgetting he has job to do in Lagos State. It shows Ambode is embittered and working assiduously for the opposition in Lagos state,” the reliable source told BlackBox Nigeria.
A recent article titled ‘Tinubu Tightens The Noose’ written on the back page of ThisDay Newspaper saw the writer, Shaka Momodu an alleged loyalist of Governor Ambode denigrating the personality of Ambode’s benefactor, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. In the said article, Tinubu was not only taken to the cleaners, it also exposed in a rather demeaning way the excesses of the Tinubu hegemony.
“He is not gifted at oratory as he pretends to or tries to present himself. As a matter of fact, he is a poor public speaker. At public gatherings, you struggle to make sense of his mostly incoherent mutterings. When he condemns others for one transgression or another against the system, you literally think he is condemning himself for abuse of power, breaking the law, and manipulating and controlling the system with unbecoming impunity,” Momodu wrote in the article referring to Tinubu.
Confirming there is no love lost between Tinubu, Ambode and Sanwo-Olu, Tinubu’s media aide, Tunde Rahman replied Shaka Momodu about six days ago in an Article Title ‘Momodu’s Obsene Obsession’.
Not mincing words, Rahman noted that, “Momodu seems incensed that Governor Ambode failed at the APC governorship primary. Showing his inconsistency, Momodu does not complain about Ambode’s path to the governorship as he complained about Fashola’s even though the two are similar. Well this is not so strange at all. Momodu is doing his paymaster’s bidding; consistency and veracity are early and frequent casualties of a mercenary pen.”
In another subtle jab, Tunde Rahman hit that Momodu was doing a paid job to wash down Tinubu while he tries to shy away from the fact that what befell Ambode was a function of his personal doing.
“Yet, if this is so, why does not Momodu write that Governor Ambode should not be where he is. Momodu dare not stray across this line because he knows the confines of the smear job he has been hired to do,” Rahman to clear the air on those acting behind the since to denigrate the Tinubu hegemony.
It would be recalled Governor Akinwunmi Ambode was also fingered in some quarters to be behind the NURTW fracas at Sanwo’s campaign flag in Ikeja.
He (Ambode) was also accused of being behind the drama that followed the initial redeployment of the Commissioner of Police in Lagos State, Imohimi Edgal.
When Edgal was replaced with Kayode Egbetokun, a former chief security officer to Tinubu when he was the governor of Lagos, he refused to handover claiming he got signal from Abuja not to handover. Sources confirmed, it was Governor Ambode who was pressing the reset button from Alausa because of his alliance with Edgal to wither Tinubu’s control of Lagos politics.
Responding to the the impeachment notice, a Commissioner 1 in the Lagos Local Government Service Commission, Olabode Garbadeen, in an open letter to LAHA, appeal to both the Legislators and Executive to find an amicable option of resolving this issue as a family even if there are perceived infractions on the part of Executives.
“Rightly or wrongly the House may have felt offended on issues of procedures and timing of the 2019 budget presentation and other allied issues which the executive possibly viewed or approached from another perspective, whatever the case maybe, on behalf of millions of lagosians on whose shoulders we all rode to power, i appeal that we find an amicable option of resolving this issue,” he wrote in the open letter.
We are all members of the same family and there is no way we can convince the public that we are incapable of resolving our differences internally in the overriding public interest.
Unless you want me to conceal this bitter truth, I should say in all honesty that not a few lagosians are still highly pained that Ambode lost his second term bid. Impeaching him on top of this will certainly not go down well with a lot of people out there. We should not give the impression that we are not bothered at all. We should bother. We are looking for votes at this crucial point in time please.
He also called the former Governor of Lagos State and National leader of APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu to help wade into the issue since the troubled Governor is his political son.
“Finally I call on our Father-in-general, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu who, to our knowledge, is Ambode’s political godfather and mentor to please use his vantage position to quash this rising squabbles in the state at least for the sake of the almighty God and for the steady progress, stability and the continuous prosperity of our dear Lagos. Same appeal to all well meaning political leaders in Lagos state and lagosians in general.”
