The state must be free from the era of nepotism and corruption that saw a private firm maintaining a stranglehold on the state’s funds contrary to world best practices….AGBAJE
The governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in Lagos State, Mr Jimi Agbaje, has responded to Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, who mocked him for adopting the ‘freedom’ slogan for his 2019 aspiration.
Tinubu had, while addressing members of the All Progressives Congress on Monday, said, “Those who said they want freedom should go and learn tailoring and vulcanising and we will do ‘freedom’ for them later.”
But, in a statement on Tuesday, Agbaje likened Tinubu to the biblical Pharaoh of Egypt who refused to allow the children of Israel to leave but kept them in bondage until God sent down 10 plagues.
“Pharaoh, you must let our people go!” Agbaje said in the statement by his Director of Media and Publicity, Felix Oboagwina.
“Apparently, the APC leader has lost touch with reality. Otherwise, he would know that like the children of Israel, Lagosians are groaning under the taskmaster that Tinubu and his cronies have turned themselves into in this state that should rate as Nigeria’s foremost,” he added.
Recalling that the biblical Pharaoh finally conceded liberty to the Israelites after vicious plagues, Agbaje said Lagosians would be liberated after the people would have delivered an electoral disgrace to the APC in 2019.
He also said his slogan mirrored the same spirit that moved Nelson Mandela to declare his long walk to freedom in an Apartheid South Africa.
Agbaje said, “We identify with our vulcanisers, tailors and all craftsmen who have the joy of duly-earned freedom after their apprenticeship.
“But it is apparent that, unlike them, those who are used to filthy lucre and the dividends of corruption cannot savour the joy that comes with the legitimate sweat and labour of hardworking artisans.”
He said the state must be free from the era of nepotism and corruption that saw a private firm maintaining a stranglehold on the state’s funds contrary to world best practices.
According to him, the freedom theme was not a coinage that he and his team conjured up from nowhere but it had come from gauging the mood of Lagos and realising that the citizens nurtured a deep hunger to be liberated from the severe vicissitudes and subhuman conditions inflicted on them by the ruling clique since 1999.
Naming Tinubu as the head of a vested interest that had turned Lagos into a private enterprise, the PDP candidate blamed the ruling APC for the state’s dismal global rating in housing, security and liveability.
He added, “You wake up one morning and find that like the Jews in Poland during the Second War, you have a toll gate caging you in; and you must pay a toll to leave and return to your home and birthplace in which you used to freely move, you need freedom from those tolls.
