August 20, 2oo8
Press Release
DPA RAPS AC, TINUBU OVER THREAT TO IMPOSE ADMINISTRATORS ON COUNCILS,
URGES ASSEMBLY TO FORWARD CORRUPT LG BOSSES TO EFCC
The Democratic Peoples’ Alliance (DPA) has vowed to resist any move by
the Action Congress (AC) to impose a new regime of sole administrators on
the councils, while urging the State House of Assembly to make public past
investigations on corrupt local government operatives.
DPA’s declaration came in the wake of a statement credited to former
Governor of Lagos State, Senator Ahmed Bola Tinubu, threatening that
members of his Action Congress (AC) who failed to accept his anointed
candidates for the October 11 council polls may have to embrace the regime
of handpicked sole administrators.
“We have no quarrel with Tinubu imposing candidates on his party. But we
do take exception to his extending his dictatorship beyond the frontiers
of the Action Congress,” the party said in a statement by its Director
of Publicity, Felix Oboagwina. “And that is how we see this threat to
impose sole administrators on councils, as if they were personal
properties.”
Media reports quoted Tinubu as telling party members: “If you insist on
the primaries, we will allow it. But if you elect those who don’t have
our support, we won’t allow it, otherwise we will appoint sole
administrators for you and you will be the loser.”
DPA said the widely reported statement earmarked the former Governor as an
inconsistent and equivocating pretender to democratic ideals, whose only
consistency was in his intolerance of internal party democracy.
In the words of DPA: “It is strange how a man who immensely benefited
from a process suddenly kicks against that same process. Democratic
primaries and elections made Tinubu what he is today, but he seems to have
forgotten that fact. Now he wants to play God. It shows that he is not
ready to practise democracy, internal or external, because reading between
the lines, what Tinubu has said is that votes, elections and democracy
will not count in the coming council elections.”
According to DPA, Tinubu’s pronouncement meant that AC had benefited
from the regime of sole administrators, hence the desire to foist them
once more on Lagos at the flimsiest excuse.
DPA said: “We had long ago read such tendencies, and it informed why we
refused to be legalistic in the matter of the local government elections,
and agreed to bend over backwards and to contest, whether AC wants to hold
elections in 20 or 57 local government structures.”
According to DPA, the former Governor’s statement exposed AC’s
game-plan of maintaining handpicked sole administrators in the local
governments, in order to serve the pecuniary benefits of a handful of
party leaders. However, DPA repeated its call for the State House of
Assembly to release the reports of its probe of council administrations
since 1999.
In the words of the party: “Almost a year ago, the State House of
Assembly claimed it had fingered some council bosses for corrupt
practices, yet nothing has come of its investigation. We recommend that
since the House claims to have proof of corruption, it should immediately
bring charges against such people before anti-graft agencies like the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent
Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC).”
DPA said the people had been the loser in AC's stranglehold on the
councils, since they failed to translate to service for the ordinary
folks, in the form of streetlights, potable water, motorable roads,
drainage and flood control.
FELIX OBOAGWINA
Director of Publicity, Lagos DPA
08033327355.