The outburst of Governor Raji Fashola of Lagos during a lecture he delivered to mark the 50th birthday of the former governor of Bayelsa State, Temipre Sylva against the administration of President Goolduck Jonathan is, to say the least, a pot calling kettle black.
According to Fashola, the last four years that President Jonathan has been in the saddle of leadership had wrought hardship to the people of Nigeria.
As a Nigerian citizen and a governor of a State, Governor Fashola is entitled to his opinion but before he starts to enjoy that freedom of expression, he should be reminded that his administration is not better off than that of Federal Government under a president like Jonathan.
Fashola, no doubt has tried in providing infrastructure to the state he governs just as President Goodluck Jonathan has done in the last three years or therabout. For the governor of Lagos State to say that the Federal Government under President Jonathan has been a waste for the past three years is unfortunate.
The administration of Fashola in Lagos State for the past four years has been nightmarish for the residents. The anti-people policies of Fashola has further pauperized the residents. From Okada riders, Commercial car drivers to market women the policies of of the governor of Lagos has created more poverty than imagined in the state.
Fashola’s spin doctors might quickly posit that he has tarred most of the important roads in the state but same is said of President Jonathan who has tarred most of the major highways in the country.
From Ibadan, Benin, Lokoja, Enugu, Port Harcourt to Kano Highways, President Jonathan’s transformation agenda has impacted on these Highways as works are completed or ongoing in these roads mentioned above.
In Lagos State, for instance, there are roads in the metropolis which is state roads that are an eye sore despite the noise about the giant strides of the Fashola administration in road construction.
The roads in Ejigbo, Ayobo, Ikotun, ijegun areas of the state are sad commentaries on the so called performance of the Fashola administration. The question on the lips of the residents of these areas mentioned above has been that does it mean that these areas are not part of Lagos that is primed for mega city?
Fashola could be pardoned for his ignorant statement because he is cocooned in his cosy office in Alausa, and have not gone beyond Abuja which he goes by the air to appreciate the giant strides of President Jonathan in all spheres of the economy.
The giant strides recorded by Federal Government on power generation appears to have been lost on Fashola and those he is speaking for.
Fashola in the attack said that there is prevalence of unemployment since President Jonathan took over the mantle of leadership in the country, forgetting that his administration in Lagos State has created more unemployment than any administration before him.
It does not occur to Fashola that under his administration, residents of Lagos who were doing something before the advent of his administration were rendered jobless no thanks to the anti-people policies of his administration.
It does not occur to the puritanical governor that his obnoxious policies forced many industries that would have absorbed teeming population of unemployed youths to, a neighbouring state like Ogun State.
What is amusing in the moral sermon of Fashola is that most of the things he accused the Federal Government of not providing to the people, he has failed to provide to the people of Lagos State despite huge amount of money he rakes in monthly through obnoxious taxing of people who against all odds want to fend for themselves in the State.
The infrastructure provision being touted by the spin doctors of the governor is restricted to highbrow areas in the state.
Places like Ejigbo, Ayobo, Isolo, Ijegun to, be candid, does not in any way benefit from the infrastructure revolution in the Lagos State which puts a question mark on the purported performance of the Fashola administration in Lagos State.
If Fashola has limited his attack on his party’s mantra that it has what it takes to take the country to a greater height, one would have ignored the rantings of the governor who is more or less a maid in the party he represents.
One question that should be asked is; whether some of the infrastructure provided by his administration in the first tenure of his administration are still functioning as at the time he was busy lampooning the administration of President Jonathan?
What is disturbing is that Fashola has chosen to misinform Nigerians on the performance of the present administration.
Let me refresh his memory on some of the major strides of the Jonathan administration. Jonathan’s government has been able to pull off the privatization of the energy sector, and in no distance time, the case of the sector would be like that of the telecommunication sector.
There is massive construction of roads across the country. One will not blame Fashola because apart from being a governor, he has not taken private travel beyond Lagos State. The major travel he made in his private capacity has been when he was a student of University of Benin, where he read Law. Since then he does not know how River Niger bridge looks like let alone knowing whether Federal Government provides infrastructure in that region.
Time has come in this country when elected officials should stop deceiving the electorates in the name of politics. One would have expected Governor Fashola to limit the birthday lecture of the former governor of Bayelsa State to proffering solution on how to improve the well being of Nigerians instead of feeding them with salacious lies.
Fashola and his likes in the All Progressives Congress, APC should stop heating the system simply because they want their party to win 2015 general elections by all means.
Fashola’s speech writers forget to do proper research before writing the misleading speech because if they did, they would have known that a lot of policies churned by the administration of Jonathan has helped greatly in reducing the unemployment rate in the country.
Take look at the auto policy of the Federal government and the spiral effect it has on the economy. Fashola should take a trip to Nnewi and ask Innocent Chukwuma of the Inno Motors Industries Limited how many cars he has produced since the inception of the policy and the number of workers he has engaged since.
Even under his nose, Kia Motors and Nissan Motors have built assemble plants that would absorb thousands of unemployed in months to come.
Ignorance is a disease, and urbane governor like him should not be allowed to be used to settle scores that is not in existence
Fashola should take another trip to Benue State and ask the former Attorney General of the Federation, Michael Andoaaka how many people he has employed in his rice mills, thanks to the policy on agriculture by the same Federal Government he had in his lecture dismissed as a waste.
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