PRESS RELEASE
5th August, 2008
DPA BLASTS AC FOR LAGOS RATING AS AFRICA’S COSTLIEST CITY
Lagos’s recent rating as the costliest city in Africa and the 30th in
the world by the Mercer 2008 Worldwide Cost of Living Survey has been
described as a negative tag the Action Congress (AC)-dominated government
must change in order to achieve mega-city status.
Blaming bad government for the unsavoury international ranking, the Lagos
Chapter of the Democratic Peoples’ Alliance (DPA) warned that the rating
would further discourage investment, provoke capital flight, kill
businesses and advance crime and corruption.
“We are not surprised at this rating. It exposes the blatant
incompetence with which the Action Congress has administered Lagos,” DPA
said in a statement by its Director of Publicity, Felix Oboagwina. “The
ranking highlights the misgoverning the city has suffered in the last nine
years. Today, Lagos is being governed in a laissez faire, devil-may-care
manner, with the authorities appearing to wash their hands off the basic
needs of residence in a way that suggests, ‘Every man for himself.’ ”
The party catalogued several negative indicators that earmarked Lagos
life: high tenement and land use charges, soaring transportation costs,
unregulated ground and accommodation rents, high cost of doing business,
double taxation, unparalleled crime and unbridled corruption.
Employing a yardstick that included food, transport, clothing, household
materials and entertainment, Mercer’s 2008 Worldwide Survey (which
appeared on Monday in Nigerian media) rated Lagos worse than Los Angeles
and New York in the USA, both of which stood at 52nd and 22nd costliest
cities.
DPA noted that the Lagos government was charging for everything and
providing nothing in return, as tax-payers still had to unilaterally
provide facilities and infrastructure that people elsewhere took for
granted.
The party pointed out that today, Lagos residents and businesses provided
their own security, roads, electricity, good education for children,
healthcare, water and other necessary infrastructure.
DPA bemoaned the fact that Lagos had over 60 percent of its population
living below the poverty line.
“Unfortunately, government functionaries have lost touch with reality so
much that they say that anyone who finds Lagos too costly to live in, and
who cannot pay the several draconian levies they charge, should shift to
other states upcountry in search of cheaper pasture,” DPA said.
Blaming the policies of the state government for the intolerable cost of
living in Lagos, the party said the government merely generated revenue
for oiling its political machinery and gratifying party operatives.
In the words of DPA: “The real tragedy is that the members of the ruling
party and the government not only appear unconcerned about this
costly-city appellation, they actually gloat and glory in it. The other
day, one of them actually went to town to boast about Lagos being rated as
one of the ‘most expensive’ cities in the world. Such insensitivity
can only come from AC!”
FELIX OBOAGWINA
Director of Publicity, Lagos DPA
08033327355