6th March, 2014
Kazeem Ugbodaga
Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola has accused the military of illegally taking possession of lands in Lagos to build their formations without purchasing them or going through proper channels before acquiring such lands.
Fashola spoke on Wednesday at the State House, Ikeja, when he received the new Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Usman Jibrin, saying that the military had been taking over lands in Lagos forcefully without going through the normal process and threatening to deal with whoever challenged them.
“We have some local challenges, as I said, they are not navy. Military officers get into our lands, and locate military zones there. The land that they did not buy from us, lands that are not allocated to them, put their officers there and threaten everybody. That is not the way to go about acquiring land,” he lamented.
The governor said military officers must not take laws into their hands, saying that. In as much as they were part of the society, they had to pay for the land they acquired.
“If anyone wants land, they have to apply for it; they have to pay for it. In as much as military officers have their code of conduct within their barracks, they are equally members of our community and they are subject to the laws of the state,” he said.
However, Fashola said the nation’s current security challenges presented huge opportunities for the country to create home grown expertise, frowning at the practice whereby the country often resorted to seeking foreign assistance to solve local challenges instead of looking inwards. He pointed out that if those foreign countries did not acquire the knowledge from their own experiences they would have nothing to share.
According to the governor, while some might see what the country is currently going through as a challenge, he would rather see it as a rebuilding process, adding that while it might not be easy for leadership, it would be possible for leadership to overcome.
“You know that most of the things that have become domesticated appliances today were as a result of military research in other parts of the world. Items like drugs and life-saving equipment were products of military research and I think the Nigerian experience should not be different,” he said.
The governor called for greater collaboration between the Navy and the state as it developed its water transportation by developing ferry and jetty terminals, adding that there seemed not to be a connection between the Navy and the State in that area.
He said the state could benefit from the expertise of the Navy in areas like dredging, maintenance and several areas where the Nigerian Navy clearly have the equipment and also assist in teaching people the right attitudes to adopt on the waters.
Fashola added that the Nigerian Navy could also take advantage of the large number of boat owners in the country by organizing training courses for such people who have had to resort to attending such courses in Dubai and other countries.
According to him, Lagos is presently procuring its ferry boats from outside the country when clearly local capacities for manufacturing such boats existed but that they needed to be activated, asking the Nigerian Navy to do the needful in that direction.
“We now see military formations now getting inside advertisement in order to raise money to support itself when clearly you can do other things in areas that are your core specialty. There are so many boats in Lagos but who is maintaining them? I think the Navy can develop service centres and training centres in navigation, charting maps instead of getting into areas where there would be conflicts with the civil society,” he stated.
Earlier, Jubrin commended the government for its assistance, which he referred to as “the home of the Navy,” in donating two boats to check criminality in the back waters.
“I have observed with interest some of the ways we conduct ourselves and we felt that there is indeed the need for us to organise training and seminars in the area of civil-military relationship,” he said, hoping that the fundamental development of Lagos State which the governor had started would continue to be sustained during his tenure and after he had left office.