EXCLUSIVE: Bank Documents Expose How Lagos Speaker Obasa Received N1.1 Billion In One Week


Despite being the Speaker of Lagos State House of Assembly, Mudashiru Obasa conducted business deals that netted him $2.4 million in his personal bank accounts within a period of one week early last year, Peoples Gazette can report as part of our ongoing examination of his shady business practices in public service.

The series of 11 transactions of nearly $2.4 million (estimated N1.1 billion at N458/$) immediately went into what appeared to be the politician’s mutual fund arrangement processed by Standard Chartered Bank, documents said.

The deposits started flowing into Mr. Obasa’s 8700018529 account with Standard Chartered, a major handler of foreign exchange transactions in Nigeria, on January 31, 2019 — running for a week through February 8. 

They came in as $180,000 twice and $140,000 once on January 31; $100,000 on February 1; $200,000 on February 5; $250,000 four times on February 7; and $299,073.43 twice on February 8.

The suspicious inflows, totalling $2,398,146.86, were subsequently cleared out in apparent mutual fund investments by the Speaker on February 7 and 8, 2019, bank documents said. Some of the payments were deposited by Adebayo Emmanuel Ezekiel, who did not indicate reasons. The federal code of conduct regulations banned Mr. Obasa from conducting commercial businesses as a lawmaker.

Standard Chartered did not return a request seeking clarification on the specific purposes of the dollar transactions, and whether or not its compliance officers flagged Mr. Obasa’s dealings.

The Gazette uncovered the suspicious foreign exchange deals as part of our ongoing dissection of Mr. Obasa’s personal and company bank accounts, as well as the larger Lagos State House of Assembly financial records. 

Two articles on how Mr. Obasa disbursed N9.7 billion in Lagos Assembly imprest earmarks and how he received N51.7 million 11 times within 24 hours were published last week.

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