PRESS RELEASE
August 31, 2008
DON’T PAMPER LAGOS GOVT, DPA CHALLENGES STATE LEGISLATURE
The Democratic People’s Alliance (DPA) has challenged the Lagos State
House of Assembly to live up to its constitutional obligations and prevent
the sitting Executive from misgoverning the state.
According to DPA, the institutions constituted key component in the check
and balance required in democracy and it should take more seriously the
task of protecting the interests, life and livelihood of citizens.
“Right now, the Lagos Executive behaves like an unruly leviathan, guided
only by its own self-righteousness and tele-guided by uncontrollable
interests that care less if it is railroaded into failure and odium,”
DPA said in a statement by its Director of Publicity, Felix Oboagwina.
Warning that people’s welfare and interests must not be sacrificed on
the altar of party camaraderie, DPA particularly urged the House to
protect the people from the onslaught of the government in power.
“It appears that Honourable Members of the Legislature have sacrificed
their oversight functions on the altar of party loyalty. Governance is
being treated as an Action Congress family affair. And in this atmosphere
of absolute power, the AC government is demonstrating much impunity,
riding roughshod over everybody. This is the result of allowing a
one-party state,” the DPA statement said.
Cases which DPA thought deserved intervention by the Legislature included,
the Lagos State House of Assembly’s discovery last year of massive fraud
in the local governments supervised by executive secretaries unilaterally
appointed by Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a matter subsequently swept under
the carpet.
The party pointed out that the House failed to call the Lagos State
Government to order when it unilaterally handpicked sole administrators
for councils contrary to constitutional specifications in Section 7(1)
that, “The system of local government by democratically elected local
government councils is under this Constitution guaranteed.”
According to the party, the House should also have devoted greater
attention to the Coroners Law, currently causing much problem with the
police, hospitals and mortuaries, as the state could boast no more than
100 morbid anatomists, far inadequate for those needing their services.
DPA equally felt the House should have queried the N275 billion Bond the
Raji Fashola administration has gone to source from the Central Bank, as
the state was yet to offset the N55 billion borrowed from the stock
market, of which N5 billion went to the Eko Akete Housing Project that has
not yielded a single flat so far.
With respect to the physical development of Lagos, DPA considered it
preposterous for the present administration to compare Lagos to Abuja and
insist on blindly replicating the experiment of the former Minister of the
Federal Capital Territory, Mallam El-Rufai, in blind restoration of an
obscure master-plan. The party faulted the programme’s merciless
application without providing compensation and alternatives accommodation
for those affected.
The party said: “One recognises the issues pervading the development of
the Lagos landscape and the need for restoring sanity. But two wrongs do
not make a right. The government is riding roughshod over the people in
executing these programmes. The House and the courts must ensure that
government follows due process and the rule of law, apart from
implementing correction with a human face.”
Other matters that DPA felt deserved closer legislative scrutiny included:
# The Exorbitant Land Use Charges
# The Traffic Violation Edict with its erratic fines
# The illegal regime of tax consultants
# Withholding of the N10 billion allocations that the Federal Government
returned to councils
# Demolition of markets
# Militancy of state agencies like KAI and LASTMA, and
# Dilapidated state of public schools.
FELIX OBOAGWINA
Director of Publicity, Lagos DPA
08033327355.