Femi Gbajabiamila says the Lagos state house of assembly crisis over Mudashiru Obasa’s impeachment nearly cost him his job as President Bola Tinubu’s chief of staff. Gbajabiamila said the trouble deepened after he was drawn into claims that he backed Desmond Elliot in the plot to remove Obasa.
Gbajabiamila made the disclosure on Thursday at an APC stakeholders’ meeting in Lagos, saying the fallout reached Tinubu’s residence in Abuja and then the Department of State Services. “If it were not that I had the kind of relationship I had with the president, I wouldn’t be here today,” he said.
The crisis began in January 2025, when a majority of legislators impeached Obasa as speaker of the Lagos state house of assembly over allegations of gross misconduct and abuse of office. He was ousted while abroad, and Mojisola Meranda was elected as the first female speaker after his removal. When Obasa returned to Nigeria, he rejected the impeachment, challenged it in court and refused to accept that he had been replaced.
Gbajabiamila said Tinubu summoned him to his Abuja residence during the dispute and named Elliot among those behind the turmoil. He said he called Elliot and warned him to pull back if he had any role in the move. Gbajabiamila recounted telling Tinubu, “Of course, the president will not believe that Desmond will do such a thing, and I don’t know about it,” before adding that the president replied, “I hear this Desmond is your boy,” and that intelligence placed him among the plotters. “I’m telling you from intelligence that he is part of them. Go and tell him to retrace his steps,” Gbajabiamila said Tinubu told him.
Three days later, Gbajabiamila said, the DSS director-general called to tell him his name was being mentioned in the case and that he was being accused of backing Elliot. He said he again asked Elliot to publicly distance himself from the impeachment move, but Elliot declined. Gbajabiamila also accused Elliot of stoking religious tension in Surulere and deepening division between Muslims and Christians.
The dispute did not end with the political chatter. After 49 days in office, Meranda stepped down and Obasa was reinstated following Tinubu’s reported intervention, but a court later nullified the proceedings and resolution that led to Obasa’s ouster. The Lagos Assembly fight has since become a wider test of loyalty inside the ruling APC, where even those close to the president found themselves caught in the blast radius.
Last week, stakeholders in the Surulere chapter of the APC accused Gbajabiamila of trying to impose a preferred female aspirant for the Lagos state house of assembly seat, adding another layer to a feud that has already exposed fractures in the party’s Lagos structure. Desmond Elliot represents Surulere constituency 1, the same seat Gbajabiamila once held in the House of Representatives before becoming chief of staff, which is why the dispute around the assembly and the district keeps circling back to him.
The immediate answer to whether the crisis could shake Gbajabiamila’s standing is yes: he said it came close to doing exactly that. What matters now is that the Lagos Assembly fight has not only been settled and unsettled in court and politics, it has also turned into a live dispute over influence inside the party ahead of the next round of local contests.
