Gov. Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State

The Majority Leader of Lagos House of Assembly, Hon Sanai Agunbiade, has said that if Governor Akinwunmi Ambode refused to appear before the House of Assembly on Monday, February 4, 2019 to explain the infractions committed by him in 2018 and 2019 budgets as pointed out by members of the assembly then, they will have no choice other than to commence his impeachment process.
Agunbiade who addressed members of the press after almost three hours of parliamentary meeting of member of the assembly , said, the assembly is not anyway witch hunting the governor has been alleged in some quarters .
He said all the assembly want from the governor is for him to come and explain those infractions noticed in 2018 budget and 2019 budget which according to him is yet to be presented to the assembly.
He denied that the members of the assembly were after the governor because they want him to finance their campaign.
“All we are doing is in the interest of all Lagosians . We are not witch hunting the governor and we want the public to know that we never ask or seek any financial help from him regarding our campaigns”, he said.
” Today alone , about five groups have visited this House of Assembly to plead on behalf of the governor and we told them that the issue before us is not that we don’t want the governor to continue. He is still the governor of the state . We want the public to know that the major issue in contention is the 2019 appropriation bill which by now should have been presented before the House of Assembly “, he said .
He went further, ” The laying of the 2019 budget according to the constitution is expected to be done before the House before the new fiscal year which is January to December and that is what we have been seeing in Lagos House of Assembly in the past years. Even this current government had brought appropriation bills before new fiscal year , three years in succession .
He said the House of Assembly is aware that expenditure had been incurred by the executive and warrant of payment had been issued on a budget that is yet to be presented and approved by the House.
“We implore the governor to take advantage of the window to explain the infractions identified by the House in our last sitting . If we are after him , we would not have given him the opportunity to defend himself . We are expecting he will walk in and take the opportunity of the window and look at the issues”, he said .
” If he fails to appear to iron out the issues surrounding warrant of payments and infractions noticed in 2018 , we will use the instrument of law which deals with the offence and that is impeachment, he concluded.