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 Daily Independent Online.
* Friday, August 13, 2004.
Tinubu is playing bad politics in Lagos, PDP alleges
By Sunny
Igboanugo,
Metro Editor
The People’s Democratic Party
(PDP) in Lagos on Thursday accused Governor Ahmed Bola Tinubu of engaging
in politics of destruction, saying he should be held responsible for the
absence of some of the Federal Government’s largesse that have been
denied the state.
The party also said the
governor had not availed himself of the olive branch extended to him by
the party for the improvement of the lots of Lagosians because of his
determination to suppress the voice of opposition in the state.
Secretary of PDP in Lagos
State, Chief Wale Mogaji told Daily Independent on Thursday that the
governor, having failed to deliver on the bogus promises he made to the
people during his campaigns to return for a second-term was now clinging
to every available excuse to hide his incompetence to govern the state.
Mogaji spoke against the
backdrop of allegations by the ruling Alliance for Democracy (AD) in the
state that the PDP had embarked on a campaign of violence in the state to
cripple the administration both at the state and council levels.
Alhaji Munir A. Muse, chairman
of Apapa Local Government and Chairman of the Council of Lagos State
Local Government Chairmen, had a fortnight ago pointedly accused the PDP
of complicity in the fire that gutted parts of the Tejuosho Market in
Lagos and attempts to destroy both the physical structures and the
revenue base of the state, especially at the council level. Dismissing
the allegation, however, Mogaji explained that the focus of the party
since the last election was to mobilise more people into its membership.
But beyond that, he added, the
party was lucky to have its member appointed the Minister of Works, who
had since then attacked the serious decay of the nation’s road networks,
many of them in Lagos, a situation that had brought a lot of panic to the
Lagos State Government and the governor, who had done nothing to improve
the condition of the people.
He regretted that instead of
Tinubu collaborating with the Federal Government in that direction, the
governor had been busy engaging in acts aimed at sabotaging such efforts.
For instance, he said the
state was the only place in the country where the Federal Government’s
efforts in providing educational infrastructure under the Universal Basic
Education (UBE) scheme had failed because the governor had refused to
approve its commencement, the same way he also frustrated a similar
programme in the Primary Health Care programme.
“You are all aware of when
Jakande was the governor of Lagos State and Shagari was an NPN man. There
was massive collaboration. So the conclusion an average Lagos State man
will have is that if he is really an indigene of Lagos, he will not have
behaved like that. So there is never a time we are interested in being
violent. What he is trying to do is to divert people’s mind from the real
issue,” he said.
Explaining why the party
supported the posting of men of the Federal Road Maintenance Agency to
the federal roads in the state, he said a situation where people in the
state were subjected to psychiatric examination for a traffic offence was
the height of degradation and humiliation.
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