As the 18 lawmakers working for the removal of Governor Rasidi Ladoja of Oyo State from office prepare to act on the report of the seven-man panel investigating allegation of gross misconduct against the governor, President Olusegun Obasanjo says it’s too late to stop the process already initiated by the state’s House of Assembly.
This is even as the Ibadan branch of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) berated the state’s acting Chief Judge, Justice Afolabi Adeniran, for violating the constitution by ignoring a court order restraining him from constituting the seven-man panel investigating allegations of gross misconduct against Ladoja. Also, it is coming at a time armed men and police armoured tanks were drafted to the state’s House of Assembly Complex and later stood down.
According to Ogun State Governor, Otunba Gbenga Daniel, who spoke when President Obasanjo visited the home of the foremost educationist, Pa Emmanuel Alayande, on his 96th birthday, the President believes that the legal process involved in the matter had already gone far and cannot be truncated.
He said that Obasanjo, had earlier intervened at the political level by setting up a peace committee led by the Deputy National Chairman (North) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Barrister Ibrahim Shema, disclosing that a recent meeting in Abeokuta, at the instance of Ladoja, had attempted to get other South-West governors to intervene in the crisis.
"I think the meeting was at the instance of the governor of Oyo State and we, naturally as colleagues, followed him to that meeting. What was in the paper was not the truth of what happened at the meeting. I remember that at the meeting we asked the governor of Oyo State what he wanted done and what he said was that he wanted Mr. President to intervene in the process.
"I remember vividly the President said he had no problem intervening at the level of politics and whereas as a party leader he has also intervened at the level of the party when he asked the national chairman to set up a peace committee. I remember the President saying he found it difficult to intervene at the level of a judicial process. Then the President said that now that the thing is at the level of judiciary he is not in a position to talk to the judiciary or to try to truncate the judicial process," he said.
Attempts by journalists to get the president to speak on the matter proved abortive as he bluntly refused to entertain press interview. He moved into a waiting Mercedes Benz car together with Ladoja and drove straight to the Ibadan Airport.
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