Open Letter to the Governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Raji Fashola: economic and policy saboteurs are on the prowl in the State.
Your Excellency,
Would you believe it that I caught a group of men – a
mixture of Igbo and Yoruba -- demanding for Wharf Landing levy from commercial
drivers? Please follow my narratives.
With this letter, my primary intention is to bring to your
attention a good bad experience I had on Lagos–Abeokuta Expressway, at Cement
(Onilekere) Bus/stop to be precise, as commuter in a Lagos City commercial bus
bounded for Oshodi from Sango. I actually boarded the bus at Meran on a return
journey from a visit to an elderly friend, your friend too – that renowned Igbo
indigene member of Awo Foundation who is also your party, All Progressive
Congress (APC’s) chieftain in Agbado-Okeodo, LCDA, Chief Livinus Okwara,
Founder of Rimax Institute.
This full disclosure of his identity is an important
reference point to the issue being raised here because he just shared the
result of his personal suspicions about the shenanigans of your alleged
deportation of some Igbo indigenes from Lagos only few minutes past that day.
He had alleged a tone of plots by some Igbo politicians with heavy presence in
Lagos to sabotage your governance credit with a view to weaken the rising
profile of your party, APC.
The bad experience was my encounter of full blown
misconducts of a group of men about ten in all – including two of them in a
type of security uniform (grey top on deep ash pair of trousers) who the team
leader, a heavily built man addressed as ‘Olopa’
(meaning the Police) -- intercepting commercial buses and impounding them after
discharging their passengers. The illegal operation, as I established it to be,
was said to have been on for hours before my bus got to the bus/stop scene to
meet its bad fate too. How much may had been impounded I may not say. But at
the count from mine before they retreated in their operational bus, they
impounded 12 buses which they drove away to unknown destination.
In fact, their modus operandi was barbaric: impounding with
bullying in their large number. In commando-like, they would invade the
unsuspecting bus from both the driver and passenger side, force both doors
open; snatch the vehicle keys from the ignition knob, drag down the driver and
a member of the team takes over the driver’s seat.
On my curiosity after observing this for a while, I sought their identity and the subject-head of their operation. The first person I approached claimed they were officials of the Ikeja Task Force on Road and Traffic Revenue. And on the subject head of their operation, he said they were acting against defaulters in Wharf Landing fees. But when I asked him if he knew more or how much fact he knew about Wharf Landing fees, he backed down and invited another person to "handle this I too know", referring to me
Feeling secured with the identity card to flaunt, the new person claimed they were members of Mobile Revenue Task Force for the Ikeja LG, which the Identity card truly revealed. My attention on the ID card revealed the bearer to be one Ogunlade Oluwarotimi. Nevertheless, he could not provide satisfactory answers to my enquiries in response to parts of his claims. For instance, after he could not defend his mention of Wharf Landing fees too, which I took time to enlighten his ignorance -- more embarrassingly to him anyway, he changed the claim of their operation to impounding vehicles of defaulters in purchasing the ‘Councils daily N200 Park Fees’.
To this again, I queried if that bus stop was a motor park
and if commercial buses in transit through Ikeja LG Province from other LG
provinces that had to discharge passengers at the bus stop were qualified to be
defaulters too. He simply backed off from my sight, murmuring also, “all this
na your gramma”.
My concern informing this open petition grew out of several factors. Foremost is that as that instant of these 'LG officials?' brigandage conducts, and of course in other related matters of public inconveniences perceived to a fall out of the State's policy implementation elsewhere and everywhere, the victims readily held you responsible. They held you accountable for such misconducts of public officials. And doing so, they discredited your government, condemned your governance style, and the whole consequence eventually may soon take its toll on your ruling party, APC. Such was the misinformed widespread animosity display against your rested Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) at the last local government elections in October 2011.
Unfortunately, saboteurs, fifth columnists, impostors,
impersonators and fraudsters are compounding this problem on daily basis to
much that it has become imperative for everyone to join hands with you to fight
them on a holistic strength. However, good results can only be achieved in this
wise if you take the necessary action when these unscrupulous elements are
identified. Like one social advocacy advert posits; spirits: armed robber no be
spirits, na human being. Ours is to identify, yours is to sanction after
investigation. This is what I have done with this memo.
On this day in question, Friday, November 22, 2013; as this
gang of saboteurs and fifth columnists combined discharged passengers from bus
after bus. These passengers simply took the recourse to you with bad comments.
One of them said, as I heard while standing amidst them: “Won ni Eko oni
baje; Eko ti baje laye Fashola - meaning Lagos has since spoilt at
Fashola’s regime. Incidentally, this was a comment obviously out of ignorant
mind and misinformed disposition.
This leads us to the second reason informing this open
petition against this saboteur gang caught in the act. Just the preceding
day, Thursday,I was at the Fifth Christopher Kolade Symposium straight from
your wife’s essential social forum – the second edition of her Parenting Forum
at MUson centre. Incidentally, you both presented speeches that were touching
and emotion-invoking about social roles of the Nigerian public needed to
give our nation a positive rebirth. But while these didn’t catch me unawares,
they nevertheless fired the subsisting passion of your leadership creed I have
held sacredly from your 100 days-in-office celebration. “You don’t need a
position to take responsibility”, you said then.
At that Kolade Symposium, your position was not in any way
different when you said that everyone, especially the enlightened mind, must
identify with a political party to ignite their interests in matters of State.
Although I must say that I am not proud to flaunt apolitical card, as I do tell
those doing so that if only they knew how much bad they were doing to
themselves and their community. I take actions contributory to governance in
this way more out of informed mind I am willing to share with practical
example.
This of course, conforms more with your wife’s advocacy
mantra introduced at her own event:: that I, as well as every other Nigerian,
“must be ready to sweep the front of my house”. The consequence of this she
meant was that a network of clean frontage of every housing unit would give a
whole clean Nigeria. This as a metaphor to the purpose of this petition is that
my knowledge of Wharf Landing fee got from the enlightenment at September 12th
Stakeholders Forum I covered for this magazine became the broom with which I
had to sweep the dirts at that scene.
It must be noted that a full investigation could reveal that
members of your party were collaborators in that obvious sabotage conducts.
This is to say membership of political party, so vital as necessary for me to
concur with you, could be limited by lack of knowledge of due rights. And to
renegade card carrying member of ruling party, power abuse becomes the
limitation. Therefore, mass enlightenment and empowering social education
appears to be the answer to mass follower docility in matters of governance.
The third reason is the gravest concern for the sources of
this deliberate sabotage to which a reference to Chief Okwara's reservations
against your apology to Igbos becomes a point. In my chat with that pioneer of
mass computer education in Nigeria, his position on the saga is explicitly
captured in this excerpt of the interview.
“Fashola only displayed an exemplary leadership to scored a
political point by apologising for an offence I feel strongly he did not
commit”, he said.
“How do you mean? “I queried
“The information”, he began to explain, “I was privileged to
access was that a Lagos commercial bus was said to have arrived a bus stop in
Ojodu-Berger area, calling passengers to load. According to a pregnant woman
who was a victim and narrated the ordeal, they were driven to an unknown
destination where the Igbo indigenes were sorted out in batches of such
raiding. They were collated together eventually and loaded into another bus to
be deported back to Onitsha”.
According to the computer education guru, why he could not
make the information an issue was that Fashola had already owned up to the
ensuing blackmailing widespread condemnation. He also said despite this, he
still wondered over the difference between the '12 Igbo destitute’ Fashola
admitted and the over '72 Igbo' the woman claimed they were.
Giving further insight to the plots he claimed was intended
to tarnish the APC's rising profile, Chief Okwara said: “We know the source and
I suspect involvement of a candidate in the Anambra governorship election (name
withheld) whose party is one of those ruling party in Southwest region.
Now your Excellency, taking a note form this; some materials
of operation this gang of 'Ikeja LG officials?’ used could give a lead to
suspecting sabotage and mischief. The operational vehicle was a white colour
Volswagen bus which they parked in the adjacent street connect to the Express
Way at the BRT Bus Terminal edge (see pix 2 above). Their Olopa
were two and they sat all through the operation in the bus, which the gang
leader (see arrow in pix 2) at first referred to as their mobile court to our
driver.
On the driver’s inner mirror of their vehicle, a Mobile
Police cotton emblem with insignia of two riffles crossed at their nozzles' end
was displayed. In fact, the minibus is typical of those the serving military or
mobile police use for commercial PP off duty in their Barrack provinces.
The gang leader and the purported Oluwarotimi looked more
like police/military personal than civilian. Besides, the leader’s accent was
laced with traces of Igbo.
With this information, I have played a part and hope that
you pick up the next stage, which is through investigation.
Your Excellency, saboteurs are on the prowl in Lagos State.
It is a fact we need to admit as a precursor to being vigilant, watchful and
exert the desire to combat them. The desperate opposition party could do
anything to … Sorry, I hold no institution responsible.
Eko o ni baje oo
Yours only,
Razaq Adedeji Jimoh
your admirer, friend; and ...member
