Obasa vs. Agoro: A Lagos Tug-of-War over Power, Process

Where there is fanfare, there can be fury. So it wasn’t really surprising when the Lagos Assembly, led by Speaker Mudashiru Obasa, raised its gavel against a quiet technocrat: Bode Agoro, the Head of Service celebrated only weeks earlier for reformist zeal and birthday tributes drenched in admiration.

The quarrel was not personal, at least not on paper. Lawmakers accused Agoro of letting appointees slip into office without legislative confirmation, as if democracy were a formality to be brushed aside. Salaries, they warned, would be cut off, appointment letters shredded, due process restored by force.

Yet some Lagosians know Agoro differently. To colleagues, he is not a plotter but a fixer, the civil servant who turned land chaos into digital order, who pushed property rights into the sunlight. His rise through the Lands Bureau was earned, line by line, through reforms that shortened queues and blunted corruption.

Still, institutions do not run on goodwill alone. Obasa and his colleagues evoked the Constitution, citing sections like scripture, insisting that the legislature is no rubber stamp. The message carried the weight of separation of powers: respect the House, or risk paralysis.

Caught in the middle is Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, tasked with balancing loyalty to his Head of Service with the Assembly’s thunder. To ignore the lawmakers is to invite escalation; to discipline Agoro risks losing one of the state’s few quiet reformers.

And so, Lagos watches a tug-of-war dressed as civics. On one side, a Speaker demanding deference; on the other, a bureaucrat known for fixing problems without noise. Who prevails? That depends on whether the rules of politics outmuscle the rules of process.

For now, Agoro’s reputation glows brighter than the quarrel. But in Lagos, even the most diligent servant learns that reform is fragile, authority combustible, and today’s applause can turn to summons overnight.