Growing Influence of Mudashiru Obasa 

If there is one name that has remained a recurrent decimal in Lagos State’s political climate in the last decade, it is that of Rt. Hon. Mudashiru Obasa, the speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly.

Obasa is not a man that history will allow to be dismissed lightly. Love him or loathe him, one truth stands unshaken: he is a political survivor. And in our clime, survival is never accidental.

Nothing illustrates this better than the dramatic episode that briefly removed him as Speaker while he was abroad. To his opponents, it looked like a perfectly choreographed coup, well-timed, legally framed and decisively executed. The belief was that the hatchet job had been done, and done for good.

But Lagos politics has always had little patience for premature victory dances.

While many people thought that was the end of his 10-year tenure as speaker, he returned and hit his detractors like thunder. Of course, that was possible with the backing of those who matter at the Presidency, and by what many still describe as political sorcery, uncanny, unsettling, yet deeply instructive.

The explanation offered was the familiar refrain of “maintaining order” and preventing future instability. That single episode explains the almost unnerving confidence that now defines him.

Then came another move that left even hardened observers stunned: the emergence of his son as Chairman of Agege Local Government, Abdul Obasa.  The precision was surgical. The outcome, inevitable. Resistance evaporated. What many swore would never happen happened, and nothing could be done about it.

Over the years, he has said it often that it is his inalienable right to aspire to the highest office in Lagos State if he so chooses. Not a boast, but a declaration of belief. Perhaps even of readiness.