Scratch that, you and I know who he offended. Insert ‘allegedly’ where necessary. Moving on…
When Ambode picked up that APC nomination form in 2015, I bet there was no way in hell, he could have conceived a reality in which he would be exiting the governorship — impeached and defeated, with just one term under his belt. Yet here we are, four years later, and our guy is staring the embarrassing record of a single, unpopular tenure and the harsh reality of impeachment in the face. Life does come at you fast when you’re waist-training.
The gist of the story is, on January 27th, the Lagos State House of Assembly put things in motion to make it really, really hard for Ambode to leave office with even a third of his dignity intact. They announced a plan to impeach the Governor for offences they stated to be gross misconduct and illegal budgetary spending.
The “gross misconduct” and “illegal budgetary spending”, is actually Ambode incurring expenses on the Lagos State 2019 budget, which has yet to be passed. Yikes!
So here’s what happened, Ambode has been trying for a little bit to present the Lagos State budget before the Lagos State House of Assembly for approval.
Back in December 2018, Ambode avoided directly presenting the budget before the house as is the custom, and instead sent a verbal communication of the ₦852,317 billion budget proposal to the house. This was followed by a formal letter, with the proposed attached and sent to the House of Assembly on the 24th and 28th respectively.
Now we can’t say for sure why he didn’t grace them with his presence, but a quick guess would be that little business last year, where the ENTIRE HOUSE went against Ambode and supported Sanwo-Olu during the APC primaries. But we can only guess.
Anyway, the House was on recess, so the budget could not be presented.
Fast forward to January 10th. The House of Assembly specified that Ambode must appear before it and present the Appropriation Bill in person, none of that proxy shit.
So he tried again. On January 21st, he attempted to present the budget before the House of Assembly. To get things rolling, he sent out a prior week’s notice to the House, to avoid any cases of had thy know.
On D-day, the pressmen had gathered outside the house, Ambode’s advance crew was also present, and it seemed like this budget was finally going to be presented you know.
Only, it didn’t happen. Officially, the House of Assembly denies being informed of the Governor’s plans to present the budget to the house. But I believe that, as much as I believe in my abilities to finish my monthly squats’ plan.
Ambode’s administration now holds the record for the longest a Lagos state governor has gone without presenting the state budget for the year. Uh-oh
With the delay in having the budget presented and passed, expenses are still being incurred by the state which the government has to offset. But the State Assembly? yeah, they don’t like that.
The House of Assembly currently wants Ambode’s head on a spike because of his spending money out of a budget that is yet to be passed or even officially presented.
So much so, 28 out of 34 members of the House want him impeached. While 6 want him to resign.
According to the speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly – Mudashiru Obasa, “The most important thing is that we should let the people know that a budget that was yet to be approved was being spent.”
Ambode currently has a week to get his plans together and explain before the house, the reason the 2019 budget is already incurring expenses.
Will he have past next week? We wait.
