the ones against the governor,

A new twist has been introduced into the ongoing face-off between the Lagos State House of Assembly and Governor Babatunde Fashola following allegations of financial impropriety against the governor and bribery against the House.


The group, which made the allegations, “The True Face of Lagos” yesterday exonerated the House, claiming that they lacked evidence to back the allegations against the lawmakers.

Presenting a letter to retract the allegation against the Assembly to the Speaker, Adeyemi Ikuforiji, at the Assembly chamber, a member of the group, Adebayo Adeshina said the allegation was becoming a snag and an inhibition to the investigation of the case.

He said since they lacked evidence to prove the allegations, they have, therefore, decided to retract them, while standing by the ones they made against the governor.

“If out of say 30 allegations, you see that one can now cause a K-Leg, why don’t you remove that. That is one allegation we cannot prove, that is that this honourable House collected any money. Since we cannot prove it, we don’t want to over-burden the House,” he said.

Adeshina, however, noted that they have concrete evidence against the governor and his team, adding, that those through whom Fashola sent the money to the lawmakers only scammed the governor of the money, without passing same to the Assembly.

In the letter, which was not addressed to anybody in particuticar, but only started with the salutation to the Speaker, dated February 15 and jointly signed by Kasali Martins, Dr. Tunde George and Adebayo Adesina, the group said: “We want to state equivocally that in the affairs of men, there are bound to be errors of judgement or mistakes, and when people admit their mistakes, it is a sign of maturity and sincerity.

“We hereby communicate to the Lagos State House of Assembly that we have since discovered that those who collected money under the pretext of bribing the Assembly in order to cover up Governor Fashola’s glaring misdeeds and abuse of office, as exemplified in wanton graft and fraud of monumental proportions only scammed the governor. We have confirmed that they did not deliver the money to honourable members.

“For the avoidance of doubt, we would like to state categorically that we are dropping the allegations against Mr. Speaker and the Assembly that they collected money. We would like to put on record that we regret all the inconvenience and discomfort this must have caused individual members, but it is important to stress that the Assembly must now use her position of high moral authority to hold the executive arm of government accountable.

“We want to say without any fear of contradiction that we firmly stand by our publication, which came out as an advertorial in the The Punch and PM News of Thursday, January 28. And, we will want to make appropriate representation to the panel of enquiry tomorrow, we have our facts, we are not kidding and we are not trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill.

“Lagos State has under Governor Fashola become a cesspool of fraud, corruption, financial recklessness and economic mismanagement and we are ready to prove this.”

Why are we so vindictive and crooked?

Why are we even taking these clown seriously?

Lawyers often describe a credible witness as

1) One who is not frequently mistaken in his testimony
2) One who has not been deceived by the events about which he testifies
3) One who does not wish to deceive
4) One who does not suppress facts or embellish events or knowledge as he knows them
5) One whose testimony is in congruity with known facts
6) One who is competent, capable, and in a position to know the event or subject about which he testifies.
7) One who has nothing of value to gain by his testimony

Once you retract a very public assertion that you had evidence of crime or wrongdoing against a person or a group, you have effectively wounded your credibility.

Exactly!

Fraud is a very serious allegation, and by admitting they made it without any concrete proof, they've effectively destroyed their credibility.

i expect the House to file suit against them for defamation.

Those True Face of Lagos are nothing buth False Face of Lagos. They keep giving contradicting evidences. God go catch them.

The court bared the House from investigating Fashola because of conflict of interest since the House was part of the complaints, now they lifted their complaints off the House basically to remove the conflict of interest just to allow the House to go ahead with the probe without the conflict of interest allegations and in effect bypassing the court ruling.


Talk about the accuser, the judge, the advocate and exonerator.

These are nothing but lying clowns peddling rubbish and carrying other faceless people's water.

I really want them to investigate Fashola and I think this is good for Fashola himself and Lagosians in general.

The only downside is the fact that it displays how easy it is to slow down the wheels of government since any d!ic!k and harry is allowed throw any allegation at the Governor/Government (True or false, merits or no merits) and set in motion state and federal investigations.

And shouldn't the house first demand for documented evidence of misdeeds by the Governor and present it to Lagosians before even going public with their intent to investigate? or is it just that all you need to waste state's funds and manpower on investigation is plain insinuation? Are these people for real?

I'm not even reading anything about embezzlement, huge sums in private bank accounts locally or internationally. This is nothing but your generic allegations of overspending and misappropriation.

We are not blind, we see what Fashola is doing with state funds.

Lagos state has a budget of 426 billion naira to take care of 18 million people and huge infrastructure demands. Rivers state's Budget @ 434 billion naira to take care of just 5 million people and less infrastructure demands is bigger than Lagos state's budget. So, we can't honestly say Rivers state with just 5 million people is excelling than Lagos state with 18 million people terms of demands and development.

I say go ahead and investigate Fashola. Make him a bigger hero.