BY OLASUNKANMI AKONI & GBENGA AKANMU

IKEJA – Speaker, Lagos State House of Assembly, Adeyemi Ikuforiji, has expressed readiness to appear in court at the next adjourned date, January 17, 2012.

It will be recalled that a Federal High Court sitting in Lagos last Friday ordered the immediate arrest of  the speaker and his personal aide, Mr. Oyebode Alade Atoyebi.

The court order was sequel to an oral application made by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, prosecuting counsel, Chief Godwin Obla, at the sitting of the court in Lagos.

When the case was mentioned, the two accused persons, Ikuforiji and his aide, Atoyebi, were not  in court, neither were they represented by a counsel.

Consequently, Obla urged the court to issue a bench warrant against them on the ground that they were supposed to report at the EFCC office a day earlier but the Speaker said he would not be able to attend due to pressing state matters.   Reacting to the purported court summon and failure to appear, the Chief Press Secretary to the Speaker Mr. Rotimi Adebayo, said “to the best of our knowledge, the Hon. Speaker has not received any court summon up till now, requesting him to show up in any court.

”It has come to the attention of the Lagos State House of Assembly that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, may have procured a warrant of arrest from a Lagos High Court to clampdown on the Speaker, the Rt. Hon. Adeyemi Ikuforiji, on the pretext that he failed to honour a court summon.

”As a law-abiding public officer, he would have definitely honoured such a summon. The Speaker will definitely appear at the next adjourned date,” he said.