For Me, A Hard Choice Between Fashola And Tinubu...
As our news tabloids screamed:
Beg Tinubu, Fani-Kayode tells Fashola...
LASG removes Fashola's budget spending from website...
Fashola spent N175 Million to upgrade state website....
Ambode dissolves boards of all agencies and parastatals...
...the entire nation still reels in shock at the way things have panned out....for a man who until now, was reputed as the "most performing governor" of Nigeria!
Although I would pick anybody over and above Bola Ahmed Tinubu any day, Raji Fashola the erstwhile governor of Lagos State of Nigeria ruled with an iron hand as he rode the state like a colossus.... trampling on feet with reckless abandon for the right and wrong reasons!
Equity had no place in Fashola's understanding of the law...otherwise he wouldn't have gone on the way he did!
A man I never hesitated in calling a lawless felon whenever the opportunities presented themselves, to say that he practically stood the law on its head would be grossly under-stating the fact.
As I cited his penchance for trampling on citizens rights, so did I also mention his capitalist dispositions as he asked mere porters in our markets to pay taxes. He demolished billboards and playgrounds as he hounded us to pay taxes from zero incomes rather than give us the Dole!
Under Fashola's watch, school fees at the Lagos State University were jerked up in excess of multiples of hundreds of thousands of naira. All entreaties and pleas to Mr Governor to have such monumental figures pruned down in tandem with wages fell on deaf ears! Protesting students were ordered to be brutally beaten and arrested and Fashola was firmly poised to have them jailed! All of them!
He was thoughtless! He was mindless! He was wicked! As he demolished my billboard...as he did others, my only "prayer" for him was that his Nemesis may soon catch up with him!
With the Hollier-Than-Thou manner he carried on...demolishing offices countless homes, stalls and shops, who would have thought he would pocket N175 million in the guise of website upgrade?!
Yet, why would Tinubu go this far to stain the reputation of this young man who many rate his positives higher than his negatives...if not to "punish" him and "teach him a lesson" for not allowing him have unfettered access to the state's treasury! And for having the temerity to sack Ambode...who as the Lagos State Permanent Secretary for Finance then later, the Auditor-General, was Tinubu's "leprous hand" into the state treasury!
It so happened that Ambode right under Fashola's nose approved some millions of the state funds to Tinubu without Fashola's approval of knowledge! So Fashola had duly fired him for such thieving transgression before he was persuaded to commute the sack to retirement!
Dr Tosin Akindele is a medical practitioner and public affairs analyst.