When President Muhammadu Buhari appointed his ministers and merged the ministries of Power, Works and Housing into one, with the former Lagos State governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, tasked to head it, or rather to serve as what one may refer to as “Prime Minister” – as the new ministry is indeed pivotal to the structural development of this country – many people in the North expressed a certain concern behind the scenes.

The reason for this was the fear of inequality or favouritism, as is often the tradition, in the identification of projects to either execute by a ministry of such influence and impact in various geo-political zones of the country. Based on my knowledge of Fashola’s track record as a visionary governor, it was easy to dismiss such concern as needless paranoia, for he appears to represent the ideals of a new Nigeria with his postmodern leadership style that seems to defy ethnic, religious and regional sentiments, which many of us are familIar with.

So, it came to me as utterly shocking and extremely disappointing when I saw items proposed by the Fashola-led ministry in the proposed budget for the 2016 fiscal year. It was hard to applaud the projects proposed for execution by the ministry in each of the six geopolitical zones, as detailed in an article by the Daily Trust. Fashola proposed the following disturbing amounts for each of the geopolitical zones:

South West – N88.7Billion
North West – N30.1Billion
North Central – N29Billion
South South – N22.5Billion
North East – N9.4Billion
South East – N2.9Billion

In his defence, Fashola claimed the figure for South-West is this high because of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway which, alone, is said to have been allocated N50 billion! This is much more than what the South-South, North-East and South-East are getting combined, which is just N35 billion. As if this isn’t enough, Mr. Fashola went on to add a whooping N38.7 billion (more than the allocation for the North-West) to the budget for the South West to make it a total of N88.7Billion. Haba, Honourable minister! If the Lagos-Ibadan expressway is that important, why not capture it alone in this year’s budget and then the remaining projects can be captured in the 2017 budget? Is the minister implying that there are no important projects in each of the regions that can also gulp such amount? As important as the Lagos-Ibadan expressway is, is it much more important than other critical and pending projects in the remaining regions? I’m utterly dumbfounded at the minister’s moral courage in even justifying these atrocious budgetary allocations. Also, how does he expect the Senators and House of Representative members from the five other geopolitical zones in the National Assembly to approve this? By allocating a mere N2.9 billion to the entire South-East, isn’t the minister further alienating these aggrieved Nigerians who have been fiercely protesting their perceived marginalisation?

source...http://blogs.premiumtimesng.com/babatunde-raji-fasholas-shortchanging-of-change-by/

When we import things which channels do they use lagos ask most of the hausa drivers and ask them what they think. No federal government present in lagos for 17 years and south west benefited nothing, what is this mallam saying.
The seaports that earned billions every year the road is that bad like death trap. He didn't mention that. South West don't have oil but we contribute a lot to the national cake.