Why Ambode may be impeached as governor over Sanwo-Olu comments
Governor Akinwunmi Ambode did the unprecedented on Sunday. The Lagos State governor threw caution to the wind, accusing his co-aspirant, Babajide Sanwo-Olu of spending fake dollars and getting arrested in the United States.
Ambode’s presser had all the characteristics of a desperate man who has decided not to go down without a fight. He had apparently done all he could, to bring party members back on his side before the decisive primary election on Monday.
Reports had made rounds on Saturday that 36 of 40 Lagos house of assembly members have endorsed Sanwo-Olu for the ticket.
Ambode’s last card, it appeared, was to taint Sanwo-Olu enough to make party members reconsider their position – or make members of the public have less confidence in APC’s chosen candidate.
“This particular aspirant is somebody that has been arrested for spending fake dollars in a nightclub in America, and he has been detained for months,” the governor said as a matter of fact during Sunday’s presser.
He even insinuated that there were mugshots of Sanwo-Olu somewhere in the United States’ database.
View this post on Instagram
The allegation has hit hard, and Sanwo-Olu’s camp has threatened, in a now-deleted tweet, that Ambode should get ready to be exposed.
Ambode, based on the allegations, could be impeached before 2019 election – if the allegations are false. It’ll be expected that Sanwo-Olu would do all he can to exonerate himself from the allegations. His political ambition is at stake.
If he presses charges against Ambode for defamation and it is found out that the governor was wrong about the allegation, then he (Ambode) would have possibly been guilty of gross misconduct.
The Nigerian Constitution defines gross misconduct as “a grave violation or breach of the provisions of this Constitution or a misconduct of such nature as amounts in the opinion of the National Assembly to gross misconduct.”
The 1999 Constitution, however, does not define what gross misconduct means, so it is at the discretion of the National Assembly to determine what that means during the process.
Already, members of the state House of Assembly are against the governor, and it requires two-thirds majority to pass the motion for impeachment.
Ambode, however, couldn’t have been too careless as a sitting governor to make any false allegation. He knows the implication. And he said confidently that “the records are there to see”.
If, however, Ambode is right about his allegation against Sanwo-Olu, then Lagosians may have huge cause to worry about their next possible governor.
It remains only eight months before Ambode’s first term as governor comes to an end, but there are a lot of twists still to be expected.
