The Lagos State chapter of the All Progressives Congress has condemned as
greedy, wicked and annoying the illegal use of the military by the
Minister of State for Defence, Musliu Obanikoro to stop the mass housing
project of Governor Raji Fashola at Ilubirin on the weird claim that the
land belongs to the federal government.
The party wonders if Obanikoro was recently made a minister to further the
well known PDP battle to stifle Lagos and a fifth of Nigeria’s entire
population just because Lagos refuse to join the destructive PDP
bandwagon.
In a release in Lagos, signed by the Lagos State Interim Publicity
Secretary of the APC, Joe Igbokwe, the party said that the claim by
Obinokoro that the federal government owns the same land reclaimed
recently by the Lagos State government is not only ridiculous but entirely
outlandish. It warns Obanikoro that Lagos is not a state that could be
intimidated by such primitive tactics as he is using and warns him to
steer clear of Lagos land.
“We are yet to understand the basis upon which Obanikoro is claiming a
part of Lagos, reclaimed by the Lagos State government just recently as
belonging to the federal government yet his recent obnoxious use of the
military to stop a mass housing scheme being constructed by the Lagos
State government. To us, this is the same illegal perpetration of crude
means to overwhelm and annex Lagos, since the state refused to sign up to
the decadent politics of the PDP and all its decrementing values. We see
Obanikoro’s effort as just another greedy, illegal land grab that will
fail as there exists no basis or grounds for such reckless impunity.
“Lagos APC is now being made to understand that Obanikoro’s appointment as
minister was to create enough crisis in Lagos, engage in a battle of forts
with the legally constituted authority and create the same enabling
environment to distract, obstruct the globally acclaimed feat made by the
Lagos State government in all spheres of governance while Obanikoro’s PDP
leads Nigeria to a certain guillotine by each passing day. We are
convinced that the perpetration of illegality and employment of brute
force to mount an illegal quest for territory in Lagos has become such an
attractive fad with successive PDP governments and we assure Obanikoro and
his masters that just as previous efforts failed, this one will certainly
fail. We are aware that what Obanikoro is doing today has no legal basis
or backing but like an average PDP man, he believes that a sophisticated
state like Lagos could be overwhelmed by the use of brute force and misuse
of the military. Lagos will certainly show him that such tactics have no
place in a democracy, even with all the misuse the PDP has subjected it
to.
“It is so annoying that Obanikoro targets the provision of mass housing
for Lagosians in the absence of such provision by the government he serves
in Abuja. To now act as a dog in a manger and seek to frustrate the well
lauded efforts of Lagos to provide cheap housing to Lagosians tantamount
to sheer wickedness, of the type that had marked the relationship between
the PDP government and Nigerians these past fifteen years.
“We are using this medium to alert Nigerians, especially the members of
the National Assembly of this obnoxious act. We want to draw the attention
of the military high command to the use of the military to perpetrate an
illegal claim over Lagos land. We want the military high command to call
Obanikoro to order and prevent such misuse of the military as it will
portend grave danger to the image of the military. We call on the National
Assembly to wade in and call this errant minister to order before he
provokes a crisis that will seriously spill over.
“We warn Obanikoro and whoever he represents in his present obnoxious
quest to annex Lagos lands to steer clear of this act for Lagos will not
sit idly by and watch such annoying perpetration of illegality against
them by an overzealous agent of backwardness. We urge all Lagosians to
rise up and condemn this illegal act as it portends grave danger to the
interests of Lagosians.”