Mudashiru Obasa, Speaker
A day after Speaker Mudashiru Obasa passed the second reading on bill against open grazing in the state to the relevant Committee to mediate, the Lagos State House of Assembly on Thursday passed the bill making open grazing of cattle in the state an offence.
The House at Thursday’s plenary also passed the state’s Value Added Tax bill, becoming the second after Rivers State whose governor, Nyesom Wike has signed the House’s bill into law.
The passing of the bills followed unanimous votes by the lawmakers after they were presented for the third time at the floor of the house.
The Speaker of the House, Mudashiru Obasa who commended his colleagues for what he described as” historic exercise ” designed to accelerate the growth of the state, directed the Acting Clark, Olalekan Onafeko , to transmit a clean copy to Governor Babajide Sanwo- Olu for assent.
Lagos becomes the second state to have a law that enables the state to collect VAT and the latest of Southern states to ban open grazing though it missed the September 1 deadline set by the Southern Governor’s Forum for the passage of the anti-grazing bill by all 17 states in the region.
The Rivers State government action followed a Federal High Court ruling which stooped the Federal Inland Revenue, FIRS, from collecting consumption tax, part of the tax that make up the VAT, in the state. FIRS has appealed the ruling.
