After Meeting Tinubu, Lagos Lawmakers Sing ‘On Your Mandate We Shall Stand’

•Speaker Obasa keeps sealed lips, Faleke says parley went well

Deji Elumoye in Abuja

President Bola Tinubu, yesterday evening, met with members of the Lagos State House of Assembly, led by Speaker Mudashiru Obasa, at State House, Abuja.

The members, including Obasa, who declined comments after the closed-door meeting, came out singing “on your mandate we shall stand”.

Obasa had arrived for the meeting about 2:50pm and was led separately to the president’s office, while his colleagues, including Deputy Speaker, Hon. Mojisola Meranda, arrived earlier in two white Toyota Coaster buses that were driven through the forecourt route for the scheduled meeting.

Sources hinted that the private meeting was not unconnected with the leadership crisis that recently rocked the Lagos State House of Assembly.

Emerging from Tinubu’s office about 4:30pm, some members of the Lagos Assembly were heard singing “on your mandate, we shall stand”.

For about five minutes, the lawmakers kept singing the popular political anthem commonly used by supporters of Tinubu to affirm their loyalty to him at public functions.

The song rented the air as they filed out towards the two buses that were parked and waiting for their departure.

Obasa, who came out of the president’s office after his colleagues had left, however, refused to field questions from reporters.

He was joined by a member of the House of Representatives representing Ikeja Federal Constituency in Lagos, Hon. James Faleke, as well as a protocol officer.

Faleke told newsmen that it was a successful meeting.

“The meeting went well,” he said, refusing to give more details.

Obasa was on January 13, 2025 impeached as Speaker by some of his colleagues. But he was reinstated on March 3 following the intervention of political stakeholders in the state, and, allegedly, on the orders of the president, who considered his removal a slight.

Despite Obasa’s reinstatement, it was apparent that the bad blood already generated by the impeachment was yet to subside. And this was believed to have informed the meeting between the president and the concerned parties in the Lagos Assembly leadership crisis.