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INEC should declare Tambuwal’s seat vacant –Gbadamosi
By WILLIAMS EKEZIE
One of the strong aspirants to the office of the Lagos State governor on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Babatunde Gbadamosi has blasted the Speaker of the House of Representatives as one that has cultivated the tradition of protecting and shielding corrupt members of the House from the law. He wants INEC to declare his position vacant while bye-election should be conducted to replace him.
He also explains plans by his party to take over Lagos in 2015.
Babatunde Olalere Gbadamosi, an accomplished businessman in this interview was very delighted, firm, straightforward and articulate. He is a gubernatorial aspirant for Lagos State under the banner of PDP.
He bared his mind on issues bordering on the debt profile of the state, insurgency and the defection of the speaker of the House of Representatives.
Are you satisfied with the just concluded primaries of your party?
There is no perfection in anything but however bad it is the party conducted it. The result has been passed on to the national body and as far as we are concerned we will just be satisfied with it.
You are from a popular background, what prompted the call to serve Lagos State?
It is a trite family tradition that there is no accomplishment until one has served the people without expectation of reward and that proviso really is the key. The idea that you can give what you have, give up your comfort in serving the people is what this is actually about. If you are driven by filthy lucre then you are not really serving. What you are doing is harvesting. I have had the opportunity over the years to gather a fair amount of experience and knowledge of certain areas of human endeavours which I believe would be of great assistance to Lagos State right now given our current circumstances, the high level of indebtedness of which I think we hold 10 percent of the foreign debt stock of Nigeria. Our domestic stock is just unbelievable; it is better seen before you can believe it. It is in shambles really and I am a very good manager of resources at that sort of level therefore it is my opinion that my skills are very much needed.
You boast of the backing of the youths, can you say the same about the elite?
Well, I am not really sure which elite you are referring to because at the end of the day throughout the history of Nigeria, we have got serious momentous intervention by people who are regarded as youths, people who are under the age of 50, the vast preponderance being under the age of 40. If you recall, the Obafemi Awolowo administration was full of people in their 40s. Then going forward in the post-Independence era, in the Gowon administration, most of the people in power were in their twenties and thirties. It is therefore no surprise that those of us under the age of 50 are beginning to root for better governance, better opportunities for our children, and better standard of living all around.
Can we then say you will be focusing on the youths and the have-nots for your victory and as beneficiaries when you are in power?
Absolutely, that is what democracy is all about. If the majority votes us in then we are going to work to improve their circumstances in life as best as we can, reduce the amount of money they spend from day to day in mundane things like transportation. Their ability and ease to transport themselves from point A to B, things as basic as education and it is indeed advantageous for us to have a young highly educated populace because that will be one of the incentives as it were for investors foreign and local.
Obviously more needs to be done in Lagos with about N400bn annual revenue. How do you intend to stop this drift in further decay of infrastructure or surpass the present government in achievements?
When you say achievement what exactly are you talking about because I recall the Jakande administration of 1979-1983, the four years within which Lagos State witnessed development still remain the reference point for all government including the one you are referring to as having achieved. While Jakande was in office he opened several road corridors including the Lekki-Epe axis by building a 70km way within three years. The same Jakande administration built 20 thousand affordable housing units across the state. Each of the five divisions of the state got something in affordable housing. All these were achieved with less of what they are spending on same today and you call that achievement? If you compare it with N1b per kilometre that is constructed today the all you can see is pure theft. There is no way to sugar-coat it, there is no way to embellish it pure and simple, so somebody somewhere is getting what they don’t deserve and the result is that the people of Lagos are suffering for that. Obviously these funds are stolen for the expansion of the ambitious political empire of the owners of APC.
Your party, the PDP won in Ekiti, and today we hear of stomach infrastructure. Do you subscribe to the phenomenon?
Absolutely. If you do not secure the people then what are you securing? If you want to call it stomach infrastructure you can call it that. The job of the government is to make sure that people live their day to day lives without spending their arm and leg to do it. At the moment in Lagos, people are spending their arms and legs in some cases their heads. So, what I am saying is that if a government doesn’t rise to her obligations, what happened in Ekiti is exactly what will happen in Lagos.
Your party has always imposed candidates, how does the Lagos chapter intend to correct this going into the 2015 general elections?
That is not true. We have seen that everywhere. I reject that because that is the forte of the opposition. In the opposition party just one man decides but in PDP no candidate ever emerges without some kind of consensus. Consensus building is also part of democracy. Now how do you call that imposition?
How prepared is PDP to take over Lagos?
I will not call it taking over. I prefer to call it capturing Lagos. I will say that the people of Lagos are ready for the PDP administration and I will say also that the PDP is ready to become the party of the government in Lagos State. This is not some kind of fratricide warfare, it is about giving the people the best possible satisfaction for the taxes they pay and you will agree that in virtually all the PDP states given the circumstances that they find themselves, given the resources available to them, they are doing their best.
Do you think the government has done enough about the insurgency in the North East?
Let’s not lose sight of the fact that it is not just the North East that has this kind of problem. In the middle-belt there is an ongoing genocidal war that has been there for years. It is a low level insurgency. Entire villages are wiped out. I think the media has a responsibility to report that one in the middle-belt just as they report the crimes against humanity by Boko Haram and the Fulani cattle rearers. So in terms of what the government has done you will agree with me that they are doing extremely well.
Was the president’s declaration of state of emergency in these states necessary?
I have always been a proponent of that from day one because I recognise it for what it is. It is the same pattern. The same pattern it started in Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and China. We need to follow the Chinese example meet it with full force. The government should use full force, no negotiations. Just shoot them, deplete their numbers until it sinks into their skulls that you cannot win the Nigeria state in this kind of war. But once they begin to see journalist helping them in their scaremongering, then they begin to think that they have a chance after all and they get more and more ferocious. It will be also clear to those romancing these insurgents that they are on a sure route to perdition.
Your party is putting pressure on the Speaker of the House of Representative to resign his position having decamped to the APC. Is that necessary?
The constitution is very clear on that. If you are elected into the House of Representative on the ticket of a particular party and you elect to cross over to another party without any issues then you are effectively resigning your seat. As to the rancour he cited in his state, we will have to take a microscope to his state to verify if there is such a thing like the fractionalisation of the party. This Speaker has been known to be a trickster; he has also been known to be a supporter of corrupt person going by the way he treated the Farouk Lawan case and those of Hembe and Azubuogu. And if one protects the corrupt obviously he is corrupt too. So I wouldn’t take what he says as gospel. I will take it with a pinch of salt and recommend that the administrators of justice investigate, and if possible try him for abetting corrupt persons and a bye election should be held in his constituency immediately. So as we speak there is vacancy in his constituency. It is not just resigning as the speaker; he has resigned his seat as a member of the House of Representative.
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