Impeachment: Lawmakers Insits Ambode Appears Before Them

Lawmakers in the Lagos State House of Assembly after an emergency parliamentary meeting on Wednesday evening insisted that Governor Akinwunmi Ambode must appear before them to explain infractions levelled against him vowing to impeach him if it continued.

Briefing newsmen at the end of the meeting, Majority Leader, Sanai Agunbiade said nobody was witch-hunting the governor as being insinuated in some quarters but that the infractions were serious issues the House could not over look.

According to him, the House decided to correct some wrong information and misconception being bandied around by the House resolutions on Ambode last week Monday, stressing that the House was not saying that Ambode should end his tenure but that because of issues surrounding the 2019 budget, he was summoned by the House.

He said the major contention was that he has started spending from the 2019 budget which had not been laid before the House and against constitutional provisions.

“The budget is supposed to have been laid before the commencement of another fiscal, which has always been the practice in the state, and unless it is laid, you cannot spend from it but the governor has gone ahead to make expenditure from the budget.

“There are also some infractions the House observed about the 2018 budget, expenditures made outside the budget, which necessitated the invitation the House extended to him and some commissioners to come and explain things.

“It is not witch-hunting as people believe; to make expenditure from the budget, you must have laid it before the House, for now we don’t have the budget so you can’t spend. As legislators, we must do things properly”, he said.

Agunbiade also corrected some misconceptions which he said were being tied to the Ambode issue, that it was not true that the lawmakers were after Ambode because he refused to fund their campaign.

“We want Lagos to flourish but we cannot compromise the regulations or constitutional provisions concerning appropriation. If we wanted war, we would not have written for him to come and explain, what we said was that where the infractions continue, we would apply the constitutional provisions which is impeachment,” he added.