Privatisation in normal parlance is the sale of government assets to make them more efficient when run by private institutions which make a profit and improve society as such by providing jobs and creating value in the process. It is an acceptable instrument of the free market economy and together with democracy as widely believed, can improve the lives of the common man and contribute to the economic progress of society at large. In Lagos state, however, since the tenure of former Lagos state governor Bola Tinubu, the reverse has been the case and the reason is very simple. Tinubu who was governor between 1919 and 2007 and has not relinquished the power of that office to date, has simply privatised the Lagos state government into his pocket as revealed by a recent publication that showed the huge number of state lands, properties and official living quarters he has bought for his personal use between now and 1999 when the Lagos state citizens had the misfortune of electing him as their governor.
A recent publication listed his present residence at Bourdillon, the once famous but now abandoned School of Nursing at Awolowo Road , 1004 flats , the colossal but now abandoned Federal Secretariat at Ikoyi and a host of plum choice properties as already acquired by him or in his sights for acquisition and possession . Some of these are properties valued at over 450m naira and some in the same figures in dollars . The list is so gargantuan that it is unbelievable that one individual can own so many such prime properties . Indeed it is said that where any such prime property would escape the Tinubu grab and grasp , the Lagos state government has been used in all its governmental might and fury to make such acquisition or purchase difficult to achieve .
This is a brazen act of plundering of the state resources by one person whose entitlement to these greedy acquisitions was that he held office as an elected governor of the state for two terms of eight years as allowed by our constitution . Yet he went on to acquire state properties as part of his pension emoluments and gratuity . This really is a mockery of democracy.
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It is as if Lagos state is a state populated by buffoons and imbeciles for such institutionalised pillaging to be going on . But for sure Lagos is a mega city populated by brilliant and hard working people who know their rights . With these latest revelations I am very sure that the days of Lagosians looking the other way while Tinubu bleeds the resources of the state to death and enrich his dirty and deep pockets and those of his and cronies are numbered .
Tinubu alone cannot be blamed for these acquisition atrocities and fraud . He technically left office in 1999 but put his agent and boy , his formerly unknown Chief of Staff , Raji Fashola as his successor and the plundering of the state properties and assets continued . It remains to be seen whether he acquired more state assets during his own tenure than that of his successor . Fashola a SAN is as culpable as his gluttonous mentor and godfather and at the appropriate time he too should be made to vomit what he blindly gave to his boss or those that he too fingered away into his private accounts here or overseas .
For now with these revelations the people of Lagos state should move as one person and make Tinubu and his cohorts and cronies pay dearly for their looting of the state patrimony . The first thing is to make sure that Akin Ambode the APC governorship candidate in the Lagos state guber elections is defeated woefully at the polls of April 11 by Jimi Agbaje , the PDP candidate in the Lagos state elections . This is the only avenue for Lagos voters to rescue their state from the clutches of a financial blood sucker of a former governor who has put in place a plan to continue his privatisation of Lagos state government with the election of Akin Ambode on the platform of the APC . Lagos state voters should just troop out massively on April 11 and break the strangle hold of Tinubu on the jugular of the state finances , resources and choice properties he has fraudulently and massively acquired in the last 16 years . They should use this governorship election to tell Tinubu like Bendelites often say that one day the monkey will go to the market and never return .
Adesina Akinwale
