Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola, has been badmouthing President Goodluck Jonathan. His latest swipe at the President calls the transformation agenda into question as if it were something happening on the moon and therefore not visible to Nigerians. If Fashola was known to be a man with strong personal convictions, who speaks and acts independently, it would have been sufficient to take him up in his own right. Unfortunately, it is well known that Fashola can never make up his mind on his own. As a man who, after more than seven years as governor, still lives under Bola Tinubu’s overbearing shadow, anything Fashola says must be taken to have been uttered under the instructions of his seemingly eternal master.
Since he is the only governor in Nigeria who can neither appoint commissioners or local government chairpersons of his choice, nor can he decide who becomes a mere ward chairman of his party, Fashola’s position can only be described as sad. It must be even more depressing for him when he has to stand truth on its head and say things that are, at best, misrepresentation of the facts, or, at worst, outright misinformation. And, sadly enough, he is a senior advocate.
Since Fashola (or should we say his master?) is not aware of any transformation that has taken place under Jonathan’s administration, we must quickly draw his attention to a few glaring facts. To begin with, Fashola and his master know all too well that if Jonathan was not the man he is, neither Fashola nor his master and their cronies would have the effrontery to lambast the President at will. To put this in context, a simple question will suffice: would they have dared say uncomplimentary things about Olusegun Obasanjo when the Ogun-born former Army General was the President?
Indeed, Nigerians today enjoy the greatest degree of democratic freedom ever known in the country’s history and this is a direct tribute to President Jonathan. As Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party Board of Trustees, Chief (Dr) Tony Anenih said earlier in the year, “It is to the credit of the President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan-led PDP government that this ambience of democratic freedom has encouraged the most combative opposition rhetoric ever experienced in Nigeria’s history.”
In contrast, Fashola knows well enough that his master has no tolerance for any opinion that differs from his. When former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chief Tom Ikimi, resigned from the All Progressives Congress on the grounds that the APC continues to suffer an image crisis as a party owned solely and tele-guided by Tinubu, Fashola’s master was not content to send his usual errand boys after Ikimi. The master himself stepped forth and released a statement that, of all things, hung its crux on Ikimi’s supposedly untrustworthiness because the latter had worked with a military regime in the past. Tinubu conveniently forgot that he is now in bed with a former military dictator, retired Major General Muhammadu Buhari, promulgator of the infamous Decree No. 4, a law that restricted freedom of expression in the press in a most draconian way.
Thanks to Jonathan’s highly tolerant nature, today we can all say whatever we like, even insult the President, and get away with it. If this unprecedented freedom does not count as transformation, perhaps the lawyer in Fashola needs to go back and dust up his law books.
One must concede here that democratic freedom, as important as it is, cannot be sufficient evidence of transformation. President Jonathan himself is very conscious of this. That is why, in his 2014 New Year’s Day speech, he said, “We are keenly aware that in spite of the estimated 1.6 million new jobs created across the country in the past 12 months as a result of our actions and policies, more jobs are still needed to support our growing population.” One must politely ask Fashola to please step out of his master’s shadow for once and tell Nigerians how many jobs he created for Lagosians in 2013.
Moreover, in giving his report on what his government had done in the preceding year, Jonathan also said, “As a result of our backward integration policies, Nigeria has moved from a country that produced 2 million metric tonnes of cement in 2002, to a country that now has a capacity of 28.5 million metric tonnes. For the first time in our history, we have moved from being a net importer of cement to a net exporter.” Again, the natural question that follows this is: can Fashola please stop parroting his master’s voice and tell Nigerians the industrial changes he has engendered in Lagos State during his tenure as governor?
It is no longer news that in 2013, 4.2 million farmers received subsidized farming inputs. In the same year, the Jonathan-led administration also completed the construction of nine dams which increased the volume of water reservoirs by 422 million cubic metres. Through irrigation and drainage programmes, the total irrigated area increased by over 31,000 hectares thereby creating jobs for over 75,000 farming families while increasing production of over 400,000 metric tons of assorted irrigated food products.
On October 1, 2014, Jonathan announced to Nigerians that, “A benefit of these combined actions is that our national food import bill has declined from 1.1 trillion naira (6.9 billion dollars) in 2009 to 684.7 billion naira (4.35 billion dollars) by December 2013, and continues to decline.” It is not necessary to ask Fashola what his administration has done for the farmers in Lagos State since it is widely known that until his master tells him to speak, and guides him on what to say, the Lagos State Governor will remain mute, a dependable lackey of his domineering master.
Written by Francis Ehigiator.
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