Lagos House Speaker Mudashiru
Obasa has been conducting private and lucrative businesses since he was elected
to the post in 2015, Peoples Gazette can report, in yet apparent disregard of
extant code of conduct regulations for public officials that barred him from
running commercial ventures as a top lawmaker.
Financial records of Mr. Obasa’s
recently obtained by the Gazette showed how the politician executed a laundry
of suspicious transactions using several companies linked to him.
On October 30, 2018, Mr. Obasa
received exactly N51,680,672.91 each into his company De Kingrun Multipurpose
Limited account in a string of eleven transactions on exactly the same day,
bank documents seen by the Gazette showed.
The transactions, totalling
N568,487,402.01, were the only activities that reflected on the account
throughout that year, indicating that they were proceeds of an unexplained deal
executed by the Speaker.
The suspicious funds were
received through De Kingrun’s account number 1017424021 with UBA, which did not
return a request seeking comments about the transactions.
Sahara Reporters had published a
series of corruption claims against the Speaker since March, and the EFCC has
called him in for questioning as part of its investigation into the charges. De
Kingrun was amongst several companies Sahara Reporters linked to Mr. Obasa, but
bank transaction details relating to the politician and his firms are just
being uncovered by the Gazette.
Records also showed that Mr.
Obasa’s De Kingrun firm has been receiving inflow from the Lagos State
government accounts. Mr. Obasa’s telephone number 08033014094 is connected to
the account and the Gazette has established through bank sources that he was
directly responsible for the transactions.
In 2016, Mr. Obasa received four
transactions each from the ministry of environment and Universal Basic
Education in Lagos. Each of the four transactions from the environment office
was N56,332,500.00 — all paid on April 21 and totalled N225,330,000.
Barely a week later on April 28,
the Universal Basic Education paid N33,013,665.27 each in four transactions to
De Kingrun, totalling N132,054,661.08.
It was unclear the nature of
contracts that Mr. Obasa’s firm carried out for Lagos to justify
N357,384,661.08 in eight transactions within seven days.
Mr. Obasa, his media aide and a
Lagos government spokesman declined comments for this story. But the Speaker
had pushed back against Sahara Reporters earlier in the year.
Although he admitted ownership of
De Kingrun as an enduring family business, he rejected reports that the company
received contracts from Lagos agencies, demanding through his legalrepresentatives evidence of transactions between his company and Lagos.
On Thursday, the Gazette
published bank records of six imprest accounts run by the Lagos State House of
Assembly, which showed how Mr. Obasa supervised suspicious disbursements of
N9.7 billion in 2019 alone.
Mr. Obasa was elected into the
Lagos House in 2007, and has been Speaker since 2015. He should have been
handicapped by the code of conduct rules that forbid elected and senior
government officials from conducting private businesses, except subsistence
agriculture, while in office.
But the regulations have rarely
been enforced, despite widespread abuse by politicians and senior bureaucrats.
In 2011, Bola Tinubu was arraigned over claims he violated code of conduct
rules by operating foreign bank accounts as governor, but the case was
summarily dismissed for irregular prosecution.
Download De Kingrun’s bank transaction records here.
culled: Peoplesgazette
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