By WALE AKINOLA 

Indications emerged at the weekend of moves by returning and newly elected members of the Lagos State House of Assembly to stop the present Speaker of the assembly, Hon Ikuforiji Adeyemi, from emerging as their next leader.

Towards actualising this, it was gathered that a group of 22 in- coming members have been meeting for the past one week to fashion out strategies on how to stop Ikuforiji from emerging their speaker again.

According to one of the lawmakers moving against the return of Ikuforiji, they are opposed to the speaker’s bid because they are dissatisfied with the way he has managed the affairs of the House in the last four years. They are querying how the N500 million monthly running cost of the parliament was spent under his watch.

Apart from this, the lawmakers are allegedly miffed at Ikuforiji and determined to stop him because of his alleged strained relationship with Governor Babatunde Fashola who he tried to probe and impeach in the last two years of his leadership of the Assembly.

According to one of the aggrieved lawmakers who craved for anonymity for now, “ we may have issues of unsatisfactory management of the House against Hon Ikuforiji but beyond that, we need a fresh hand to ensure a smooth working relationship with Governor Fashola so as to enhance the stability of the system and a rapid development of our state.”

“We know that the Speaker is interested in going for the governorship seat of the state. He lost that bid in the last election and he is ready for it in 2015 and we don’t want him to use his ambition to scuttle our working relationship with the executive. And we believe that our leader, Asiwaju Tinubu will respect our choice on this when the time comes”, the source further said.