Let Lagos Generate Own Power, Speaker Tells FG
By Akinwunmi King , Reporter, Lagos

Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Adeyemi Ikuforiji, has called on President Umaru Yar'Adua to allow Lagos State generate its own power independently.

Ikuforiji made the call on Tuesday during the Assembly's Oshodi-Isolo Town Hall Meeting at the Oshodi Sports Centre.

His anger had been aroused when power went off as the member of the Assembly representing Oshodi-Isolo State Constituency II, Omowunmi Olatunji-Edet, was delivering a welcome address at the event.

Power did not return until about 50 minutes later.

The hall became hot that people had to start leaving one after the other, while those remained in the heat opted to using their copy of programme of the events to fan themselves.

Ikuforiji and other members on the high table similarly did the same thing.

It was later alleged that Olatunji-Edet's opponents were the ones who sabotaged the generator that was working perfectly when the programme began.

And after almost one hour, the generator began to work again.

While expressing his anger, Ikuforiji said it is high time the Federal Government started practicing true federalism.

According to him, the "government we are still running is not different from that of military.

"As far as Nigeria is concerned, we are not yet running true federalism despite having democracy. The country is still being run as it was during the military era.

"It is high time, the Yar'Adua government allowed Lagos State, which is the commercial nerve centre of the country to generate its power independently.

"We have our own way of solving this problem and we have made it known 10 years ago, but the Federal Government did not allow it to see the light of the day.

"I am certain that if Yar'Adua permits us to carry on with this initiative of Independent Power Project, our coming generation would have no idea of what is called power failure.

"Let the Federal Government earmark some money for Lagos State to carry out this project and I am optimistic that an end would come to this power problem in Lagos State," Ikuforiji said.

deor03:

@ Topic

I totally agree. 

I have not had light for over 2 weeks now and it is very demoralizing.

Once he sees that you have potentials to rise to be anything, he will do everything within his means to ensure that you don’t become anything. He will sabotage you; he will create hurdles for you

But like I have told you Umaru is not comfortable at all with people who know what they are doing. Nasir was one of the principal pillars of the Obasanjo administration, and he made a lot of noise. Umaru doesn’t like people like that; he doesn’t like achievers.

This is somebody who will sit in Katsina when the National Council of State is meeting in Abuja. This is somebody who does not have the telephone number of more than one governor out of the 36 governors of Nigeria. This is somebody who apart from the ministers that come from Katsina didn’t know any minister. This is somebody who apart from the names of the national chairman and may be secretary of the PDP didn’t know any other executive of the People’s Democratic Party. There is no way somebody who has kept himself as a provincial person, someone who only knows his environment… and then you go and bring him as president of Nigeria.