APC Condemns Obanikoro's Illegal Land Grab In Lagos

The Lagos State chapter of the All Progressives Congress has condemned as

greedy, wicked and annoying the illegal use of the military by the

Minister of State for Defence, Musliu Obanikoro to stop the mass housing

project of Governor Raji Fashola at Ilubirin on the weird claim that the

land belongs to the federal government.
The party wonders if Obanikoro was recently made a minister to further the

well known PDP battle to stifle Lagos and a fifth of Nigeria's entire

population just because Lagos refuse to join the destructive PDP

bandwagon.
In a release in Lagos, signed by the Lagos State Interim Publicity

Secretary of the APC, Joe Igbokwe, the party said that the claim by

Obinokoro that the federal government owns the same land reclaimed

recently by the Lagos State government is not only ridiculous but entirely

outlandish. It warns Obanikoro that Lagos is not a state that could be

intimidated by such primitive tactics as he is using and warns him to

steer clear of Lagos land.
“We are yet to understand the basis upon which Obanikoro is claiming a

part of Lagos, reclaimed by the Lagos State government just recently as

belonging to the federal government yet his recent obnoxious use of the

military to stop a mass housing scheme being constructed by the Lagos

State government. To us, this is the same illegal perpetration of crude

means to overwhelm and annex Lagos, since the state refused to sign up to

the decadent politics of the PDP and all its decrementing values. We see

Obanikoro's effort as just another greedy, illegal land grab that will

fail as there exists no basis or grounds for such reckless impunity.

“Lagos APC is now being made to understand that Obanikoro's appointment as

minister was to create enough crisis in Lagos, engage in a battle of forts

with the legally constituted authority and create the same enabling

environment to distract, obstruct the globally acclaimed feat made by the

Lagos State government in all spheres of governance while Obanikoro's PDP

leads Nigeria to a certain guillotine by each passing day. We are

convinced that the perpetration of illegality and employment of brute

force to mount an illegal quest for territory in Lagos has become such an

attractive fad with successive PDP governments and we assure Obanikoro and

his masters that just as previous efforts failed, this one will certainly

fail. We are aware that what Obanikoro is doing today has no legal basis

or backing but like an average PDP man, he believes that a sophisticated

state like Lagos could be overwhelmed by the use of brute force and misuse

of the military. Lagos will certainly show him that such tactics have no

place in a democracy, even with all the misuse the PDP has subjected it

to.
“It is so annoying that Obanikoro targets the provision of mass housing

for Lagosians in the absence of such provision by the government he serves

in Abuja. To now act as a dog in a manger and seek to frustrate the well

lauded efforts of Lagos to provide cheap housing to Lagosians tantamount

to sheer wickedness, of the type that had marked the relationship between

the PDP government and Nigerians these past fifteen years.

“We are using this medium to alert Nigerians, especially the members of

the National Assembly of this obnoxious act. We want to draw the attention

of the military high command to the use of the military to perpetrate an

illegal claim over Lagos land. We want the military high command to call

Obanikoro to order and prevent such misuse of the military as it will

portend grave danger to the image of the military. We call on the National

Assembly to wade in and call this errant minister to order before he

provokes a crisis that will seriously spill over.
“We warn Obanikoro and whoever he represents in his present obnoxious

quest to annex Lagos lands to steer clear of this act for Lagos will not

sit idly by and watch such annoying perpetration of illegality against

them by an overzealous agent of backwardness. We urge all Lagosians to

rise up and condemn this illegal act as it portends grave danger to the

interests of Lagosians.”