The Probe Of Lagos Security Trust Fund

By Joe Igbokwe

The call by Lagos PDP for an EFCC probe of the Lagos State Security Trust Fund is symptomatic of PDP’s abject ignorance of both the working of government in Lagos and the demands of the security sector. Such state of acute ignorance is why the PDP is presiding over the worst security crisis the country has experienced since its independence history, even while the party loots trillions of naira each year in the name of security.

In making the call for a probe of the same security agency that has ensured that Lagos remains the safest oasis of refuge in the highly insecure country, the PDP has reduced Nigeria, Lagos PDP is suffering from acute idleness prompted by its greedy approach to governance as a nest feathering business. Lagos PDP must get serious if it must present a scintilla of challenge to ACN in Lagos and wisen up to the reality that its quest to loot Lagos will always remain a wild and unrealised dream.

It is absurd, ridiculous, tendentious and quite awkward that Lagos PDP attributes collapsed building incidences, fire outbreaks and all other cases of disaster in Lagos to the deficiencies of the Lagos State Security Trust Fund. Even as we are yet to find any connection between the efficiency of the state security agency to these alleged incidences the Lagos PDP retched up in its confused minds, we dare say that no building will stand in PDP’s Nigeria if security shortfalls account for incidences of collapsed buildings. We state in unequivocal terms that all structures in Nigeria would have been burnt down by now if inefficiency in security is responsible for fire incidences, as the mandarins of the fallen house called Lagos PDP wanted to humour Nigerians with. We challenge Lagos PDP to come out with credible statistics to show that Lagos, even with its huge population, recorded more crime than any other state in Lagos in the period the Lagos State Security Trust Fund has been in existence, instead of displaying their well known idle and pedestrian reasoning in their so-called call for probe.

We would have expected the bunch of desperadoes that call themselves Lagos PDP to tell Nigerians where the trillions voted each year for security by the PDP federal government had ended up when ceaseless bombings, armed robbery, kidnapping, ritual killings and all other types of crime have reduced Nigeria to a region worse than Somalia, in the words of a founding PDP stalwart, General Theophilus Danjuma. We would have expected Lagos PDP to tell Nigerians why the more trillions of naira that are yearly appropriated for security, the more Nigerians fall victims to all sorts of insecurity to the extent that no Nigerian considers himself safe in the country today.

The call for probe, premised on the most laughable reasons, exposes PDP’s bare grasp of critical issues and accounts for why Nigeria has practically crumbled under the grasp of PDP. It is premised on the same traditional greed syndrome that pockmark PDP’s approach to politics and issues and is targeted rather on the presumed goodwill the Lagos State Security Trust Fund has enjoyed since it was set up. It is left for Nigerians who enjoy the special status of Lagos as the most peaceful and least crime-prone state in the encircling state of insecurity the PDP presides over in the rest of the country, to adjudge the efficiency of the entire Lagos State security system, even when it targets the largest number of Nigerians. PDP is rusty from treasury cleansing as to know the real worth of securing a state like Lagos. PDP is deep gone in plundering that it cannot really appreciate the alternative to the state of relative security Lagosians enjoy in Nigeria at present. The problem with Lagos PDP is that it envisions the EFCC as an attack dog that will aide its wild and puerile quest for power in Lagos.

For the avoidance of doubt, the Lagos State Security Trust Fund is meeting its mandate, as prescribed by the Lagos state government. Its actions and activities have been hugely successful and account for why Lagos is comparatively safe from all the violent crimes that have overtaken Nigeria as the PDP slumbers and invents newer means of salting the national treasury. The LSSTF carries outs its activities in very accountable ways that meets the standards of the Lagos State government and all the corporate partners that voluntarily fund the agency. We want to assure Lagos PDP that it is slaving for nothing if it hopes to either curry the sympathy of Lagosians with such baseless and frivolous allegations against a pro-active security agency as LSSTF or get the EFCC to indulge in such frivolous adventures when EFCC’s table is overflowing with tons of evident scams the PDP has employed to rob Nigeria silly in these past fourteen awful years.

 •Igbokwe is Publicity Secretary  ACN, Lagos State.