Lagos ACN warns President Jonathan to steer clear of Lagos
The Lagos State chapter of the Action Congress of Nigeria has warned President Goodluck Jonathan that he risks meeting his political waterloo should he think of employing underhand practices to capture Lagos for his party. The party said it was reacting to the information about the president's alleged effort to incite the Igbo and Ijaw against the Yoruba in Lagos as a way of swerving votes for his PDP and said such effort will fail with more resounding thud than in previous efforts the PDP had made to force itself on Lagosians.
In a release in Lagos, signed by the Lagos State Publicity Secretary of the ACN, Joe Igbokwe, the party says it is least expected that a president should allow himself to be pulled into playing demeaning ethnic politics that will certainly endanger the peaceful co-existence of Lagosians. It says that such dangerous politics belongs to the past and must be stoutly resisted by all Lagosians who are equal stakeholders in the present laudable achievements of Nigeria's only mega city.
“We are appalled by the widely reported effort of the president and his PDP to retch up ethnic politics and use it to instigate disunity, hatred and passion between the various ethnic groups that have existed peacefully in Lagos. We want to warn the president and his PDP that the negative implications of their alleged plan will not bode well for the country, even as we know they are struggling in vain. If this effort is true, then we doubt if there is any hope for the country where a president that has made little or no impression on the daunting problems besetting the country is now belittling his office by playing very cheap ethnic and sectional politics to gain political advantage.
“Lagos ACN is not fazed by what the PDP can do in Lagos because we know that its fate in the coming polls will be worse than its fate in the previous polls given the spectacular performance of the ACN administration in the past four years. But we fear that such negative acts will unleash profound hate and sow discord among the various ethnic groups in the country that have found Lagos a safe heaven and a melting point for their realization of their life dreams. We fear that the president and his party want to set Lagosians on edge and wedge the final war in the already tensed country and we warn them to desist from such acts that will certainly spill over to all parts of Nigeria as Lagos represents a mini Nigeria with the highest aggregation of all ethnic groups living peacefully together than any other city or state in Nigeria.
“We have no doubt that the PDP looks at Lagos, with all its well acknowledged achievements with a certain suicidal envy but we want to them to know that Lagos achieved its enviable status and prospect through hard work and not the reveling that has been the hallmarks of PDP governments all over the place. We want them to know that Lagos is home to over 65 per cent of Nigeria's elite and as such, they should not engage in mean, underhand practices to gain political advantage over a performing party and government in Lagos.
“If President Jonathan needs little political education, we want him to know that Lagos resisted all desperate efforts by the erstwhile Obasanjo administration to steal it for the PDP. It resisted all dirty shenanigans of both the Obasanjo and Yar'Adua regimes to arrest its development and has remained the fortress of progressive politics in Nigeria since it was founded in the nineteenth century. We want him to know that the CAN government in Lagos is offering the best of resource oriented progressive governance in Lagos and he would be taking Lagosians for fools if he thinks all it takes for a corrupt and incompetent party to do to cart away Lagos is to play primitive ethnic politics with the diverse population of Lagos.
“We want to assure Lagosians that we are ever ready to represent their interests, no matter the tribe, tongue or religion and we do not need a woefully failed party to realize our bests as Nigeria's best instance at harmonious living, the best instance of progress in a thoroughly despoiled country and the future hope of Nigerians for redemption from the bestial hands of the PDP. We want to assure Lagosians that the ACN is there for them irrespective of the tribal and ethnic make up for we are Lagosians first before being from different tribes. We warn Igbo and Ijaw to resist this Greek gift, this ultra selfish and ulterior effort to ride at their back for transient political advantage as this will seriously backfire in the long run.”