The Lagos State chapter of the Action Congress condemns the latest ploy of President Olusegun Obasanjo to play cheap and self-serving politics with Lagos by his recent statement that Lagos deserves a better deal than what it is getting at present. We wonder why Obasanjo is just waking to the fact that the former federal capital which houses more than one-tenth of the country’s population and accounts for over 75 percent of the country’s economic activities deserve a better deal after he spent eight whole years visiting the worst forms of persecution on Lagos. We wonder if Obasanjo is just waking to the fact that Lagos deserves a better deal when he is just some few days away from relinquishing power and when he busied himself for eight years in subverting the interests of Lagos for his cheap political ends. It is unimaginable that a Yoruba president should display the kind of open hatred against Lagos just because the state has vehemently refused to play the purblind and narrow politics of the PDP.

If Obasanjo is just realising the importance of Lagos because he is inches away from what would obviously be a tempestuous retirement, then he was grossly unqualified to rule Nigeria in the first instance.

We are vindicated in this assertion by the grand failure which he was as a president that was endowed with a monumental eight years oil windfall but who rather flowered political brigandage, electoral robbery, pranks, chicanery, corruption, pursuit of vendetta and plain hubris.

If Obasanjo thinks he would bail himself of the culpability of subjecting a state as important as Lagos to the worst form of illegal persecution by asserting cheaply and shamelessly, in this very last minute, that Lagos deserves a better deal, we state that he would not be allowed to go away with the cheap ends he wanted to curry with that lame statement.

Lagosians still remember the wicked, abhorrent, grossly illegal seizure of the statutory of Lagos State council funds by Obasanjo and his PDP gang after the Supreme Court ruled he lacks such despotic power.

Lagosians still remember how Obasanjo launched a fiendish brood of hoodlums on Lagos roads, in the name of FERMA for the main purpose of destabilising Lagos. We still remember how Obasanjo and his PDP gang subjected Lagos State monthly allocations to the most callous deductions, how Obasanjo and his cult reduced Lagos allocations to mere pittance so as to frustrate any effort to lift Lagos from the overwhelming impediments that naturally afflict it with its enormous population.

We remember how Obasanjo and his PDP gang frustrated the reclamation of the Bar Beach so as to further their wicked political interests. We were aware of how Obasanjo frustrated the Lagos Independent Power Project so as to score cheap political ends. We are fully aware of how Obasanjo and his cult in PDP abandoned Lagos roads and the need to expand the road network in Lagos for eight years so as drive.

Lagosians are aware of how Obasanjo and his PDP abandoned federal infrastructure in Lagos for eight years just because they wanted to settle cheap political scores against a people that have consistently repulsed their buccaneerish political tendencies.

Is it not the same Obasanjo and his PDP that conspired to allocate census figures that clearly reduced the population of Lagos, to the consternation of all Nigerians, just because Lagos is not another of the dead centers that are called PDP states where feckless robots and malleable pawns, beholden to the vice-ridden order in Abuja presided.

We thank God that in Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Lagosians have a man and government that were clearly ahead of the Abuja parody hence Lagos never missed from this vendetta-driven agenda of Obasanjo and his PDP to reduce and whittle the importance and influence of Lagos.

In Asiwaju Tinubu, Lagosians has a man who made Lagosians forget the show of revelry that was launched in Abuja. So, we tell Obasanjo to go to hell with his new found realisation. Lagos does not need such hypocritical statement from Obasanjo and his menservants for they are terrible nightmares Lagosians would want to put behind them.

Lagos AC is not persuaded to think that Obasanjo never knew what he was doing when he was visiting these spates of unconscionable persecution on Lagos.

That a man that wielded power for eight years never knew till his last few days in power that Lagos deserves an elevated place in Nigeria smacks of the very worst genre of self-deception and Lagosians that are still smarting from the bruises of the most barren government in the history of the country are not deceived about this.

Beyond this predilection of Obasanjo to play politics with a state he visited with the crudest form of marginalisation lies the fact that for the Yorubas, it would take another 40 years to produce a president of the country and the providential opportunity they had was frittered away by a president that refuses to see beyond his nose and one that is deep in infantile contrivances as the one that subjected Lagos to the most brazen and callous denigration in the history of Nigeria. It is so bad that Obasanjo and his PDP cannot point to just one worthwhile infrastructure as their contribution to Lagos in the last eight years.

Lagos AC therefore tells Obasanjo to go to his Otta with his self-serving contention meant to buy peace with Lagosians who he had so badly wronged. We don’t need such hypocritical sermons, as we are now waiting to see the back of this shameless, immoral and corrupt PDP government that came to power in 1999.

•Igbokwe is the Publicity Secretary of Lagos Action Congress (AC).

In his 8 years in office, Obasanjo has marginalized Lagos more than any other state in Nigeria. He is still withholding about N14 billion local government funds belonging to the state as we speak. Obasanjo has reimbursed other states billions of naira for monies they spent on federal roads. Lagos, on the other hand, has been given chicken change in reimbursement. 

Does the fact that Lagos is governed by AC (not PDP) and Obasanjo has issues with Tinubu, does this justify the complete neglect of the 14 million people that call Lagos home ? Many people say Tinubu is a failure; to me, OBJ plays a big role in Tinubu's inability to do more for Lagos as its Governor.

The federal government has paid so much attention to developing abuja to the detriment of Lagos, its commercial capital, and this is really saddening.

Passing the buck, ojuyobo omo mame failed the state!

lagosians have messed up by voting or riggin for ac. it happens all over the world once u are in the opposition u get a very little deal even in lagos ibeju lekki that is for pdp gets a very bad deal from tinubu let us realise this but no we all feel fashola is the answer, wether obj is right or wrong is the average man onm the street that ll suffer if there is a problem btw the state and the federal state govt. lagos is not like any7 other state we deserve a better deal and tinubu did not allow this to happen, he is to vindictive

When Lagosians decided that they dont want OBJ and PDP Is there a crime in that

NO absolutely nothing wrong with that!

But they shouldnt keep quiet over the the condition of lagos state, it is not enough passing the blame to the federal government, even with 100b in loans and grant there is still nothing to show for 8years!