Date Published: 11/11/09

11 th November, 2009.

Press Release.

Lagos AC Refutes DPA’s Claims on Tejuosho Market.

The Lagos State chapter of the Action Congress has dismissed as wild and reckless the recent allegation raised by Lagos State DPA that the Fashola regime wants to dispossess traders of their spaces in the new Tejuosho Market. The party says that the allegation conforms to DPA’s known penchant to trade reckless and unsubstantiated propaganda against Lagos to further whatever interests it wants to project.

In a release in Lagos, signed by the Lagos State Publicity Secretary of the AC, Joe Igbokwe, Lagos AC said that the Lagos State government has not yet reneged on its promise to ensure that traders displaced at the burnt Tejuosho market are allowed to get back their stalls. It says that the Lagos DPA has become notorious for manufacturing lies and concoctions against the Lagos State government for whatever unstated interests it is desirous of pursuing in Lagos.

“We want to state that the new Tejuosho Market is a bigger and much more sophisticated complex than the burnt market and this was why the Lagos State Government involved private developers to develop the market. We are aware that traders were displaced by the sad incident of the burning of the market, which is why the Lagos State government made a promise to them that they would get their stalls back on a new term that would not be difficult for them to fulfill.

“As at date the market is still under construction and the private developers have advertised for subscribers at their terms. This has nothing to do with the former owners, whose stall are still intact and will be allocated at very considerate terms that will be affordable to the displaced traders. It is therefore obvious that in its desperate bid to play the scarecrow and instigate Lagosians against the government, the DPA has gone to town with poorly manufactured lies and innuendoes.

“Ordinarily, it is easy to sway the sympathy of long suffering Nigerians with such petty and trite arguments of shutting them out of a modern shopping mall. At best this suggests that Nigerians are impervious to modernity and are condemned to surviving on debris and decay. It is easy to earn unmerited sympathy with such cheap wolf-crying as the DPA did in their recent cocktail of lies against the Lagos State government on the Tejuosho market issue but in the long run, the good people of Lagos State will always come to terms with the fact that we cannot continue operating a state of decay and rot just because we want to gain the applause of those who have vowed not to acknowledge the great works going on Lagos today. To the Lagos DPA, Lagos should arrest development and progress just because some few people will have to pay a price for the progress of a whole. What a cheeky argument!

“Lagos AC wants to re-assure the good people of Lagos State that the government is still committed to its pledge to the displaced traders of Tejuosho Market and that at the same time, the government will not flag from transforming Lagos State infrastructures to world class standard. Tejuosho is one of such facility and we still insist that Lagos State and Nigerians will ultimately benefit from the gargantuan development going on in Lagos presently.

“At the risk of repeating ourselves and restating the obvious, the present Lagos State government works fully for the people of Lagos State and Nigerians as a whole. We want to state that the people remain at the center of the present monumental transformation of Lagos. We have no intention of abandoning this creed for without it, development is meaningless. We urge Lagosians to disregard the antics of Lagos DPA or any other group that feels that we should be blackmailed into abandoning Lagos to rot away for them to grow their narrow interests.”

Joe Igbokwe.

Publicity Secretary,

Lagos AC.