Junior League Board Illegal —State Assembly

Members of the Lagos State House of Assembly have declared that the Board of the State Junior League is illegal.

The lawmakers also frowned at the establishment of the Junior League saying it did not follow the due process.

The House had during its last Tuesday plenary session invited the Commissioner for Youths, Sports and Social Development, Enitan Oshodi and his counterpart from the Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs and the Chairman, Lagos Junior League to appear before it over an allegation raised by the House Chairman Committee on Youth, Sport and Social Development, Babatunde Ayeni, that the Committee had severally invited the League and that it had continually refused to honour their invitation.

The house had accused the League of saying the Committee cannot perform an oversight function over it because they are not a government agency or parastatal.

During his submission when he finally visited the House, Enitan informed the House that the Chairman of the Junior League is presently out of the country.

The Commissioner however said the Board operated as an entity on its own, while the Secretary of the Board said the Board was incorporated with the Corporate Affairs Commission as a Public Liability Company.

The Commissioner in his briefing said he will seek advice from the State Attorney-General on the position of the law on the existence and operations of the Board.

Members who spoke on the issue agreed that there is no enabling law that has set up the Junior League and for the sake of avoiding future problems on the constitutional backing of the League, there was the need for the House to send it back to the Committee on Youth, Sport and Social Development to fine-tune its activities.

The Deputy Speaker, Kolawole Taiwo, standing in for the Speaker, Adeyemi Ikuforiji, told the Commissioner: “I know you have good intentions towards developing Youth and Sport in the State, but we need to do it right so that people will not find fault with our good intentions.”

He urged the Commissioner to engage the law in his official activities.

—Eromosele Ebhomele