The Lagos State chapter of the All Progressives Congress has berated the
governorship candidate of the PDP, Mr. Jimmy Agbaje for saying that he
will cancel the Public Private Participation arrangement that saw to the
execution of the Lekki-Épé Expreessway.
The party said the threat is an irrational election promise directed at
foreign investors, which stands to cripple the economy of Lagos and affect
the wobbling Nigerian economy.
In a release in Lagos, signed by the Lagos State Publicity Secretary of
the APC, Joe Igbokwe, the party said that it is quite surprising that at
this age and time when the drive for foreign investment is needed to break
the shackles of economic doom, an aspiring candidate to the Lagos State
governorship stool should issue such naked threat to Investors to boost
his electoral chances.
The party said that an Agbaje/PDP government will spell doom as the
sixteen disastrous PDP wreckage of the country.
“Two days after Agbaje’s disastrous election promise to cancel the
foreign-driven concession on the Lekki-Épé Expressway, Punch newspapers
carried a report that foreign investors, alarmed by the economic and
political risks in the country, had pulled out N783.17 billion from the
Nigerian Stiock Exchange. This is an alarming economic statistics that
should worry every Nigerian but in his desperation to con Lagosians of
votes, Agbaje is threatening to stop foreign investment in Lagos such as
the concession arrangement behind the construction and subsequent tolling
of Lekki-Épé Expressway.
“Lagosians will like to know from Agbaje and his PDP why their PDP federal
government is promising a non existent 1.8 kilometers Second Niger Bridge
that will be tolled from at least six positions for twenty five years
while he is making a campaign issue of tolling a well delivered Lekki-Épé
Expressway that meets the great needs of the beneficiary towns for a
relief from endless traffic bottlenecks the PDP federal government has
turned blind eyes to.
“Again, Lagosians are aware that the dilapidated Airport Road, which the
PDP federal government has abandoned while playing politics with completed
world class roads in Lagos is tolled and we wonder why Agbaje and Lagos
PDP have not promised Lagosians that their assumed government will not
only stop toll collection on the road but will build him in the unlikely
event that they control the government of Lagos State.
” Lagos APC notes that out of frustration from the criminal negligence the
PDP federal government has meted out to federal roads in Lagos for the
past sixteen years, the Lagos State government has undertaken the
reconstruction of many federal roads in Lagos and is currently delivering
world class reconstruction of such roads like the Lagos- Ikorodu Road and
the Lagos- Badagry Expressway which serves as a gateway to the country but
which had been completely abandoned by the PDP federal
government.
“But we find it alarming that someone that dreams of governing Lagos is
issuing such economically disastrous threat to foreign investment in a
state like Lagos when the federal government under the control of his
party has made the sing song of attracting elusive foreign investment the
epicenter of its failed economic programme for the past sixteen years.
When we consider that his party is today promising Igbo an elusive Second
Niger Bridge that will be built through PPP and the same concession
arrangement that drives the Lekki-Épé Expressway, we cannot but expose the
shallowness, desperation and hypocrisy of Jimmy Agbaje and the Lagos PDP.
“It is easy to make bogus promises like Agbaje is now dishing out but
practicality it is Nothing entirely. We know those dragging Agbaje like a
soulless puppet rank among the worst types of pests that can descend on
any entity. The Disaster the PDP led governance has made of Nigeria in
sixteen years is all there to warn us to visit pestilence and destruction
on a working, stable and secure state like Lagos that mops up the fall
outs of the wreckage which PDP had made of Nigeria in the past sixteen
years. Lagosians are warned that Agbaje and PDP have nothing to offer
Lagos than to reduce it to the same rubble PDP has reduced Nigeria in
sixteen years of unprecedented waste laying.”