Why Igbo Should Vote For APC

By Prince Olusegun Ologbese

As a progressive group, we the Association of Good Leadership Advocates Peace Development Lagos, an offshoot of Concerned People of Lagos State (CPLS), are compassionately appealing to all residents of Lagos State to go out there on Saturday, 11 April and vote for the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode in their own interest.

Lagos State, being the former capital and economic nerve centre of Nigeria has suffered too long in the hands of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, administrations since the commencement of the present democratic dispensation. This is because Lagos residents refused to vote for PDP. It got to a point that the PDP-led government used its federal might to stop allocation of funds to local governments in Lagos State from the federation account for more than six months.

Now God, in His infinity mercy, has shifted power at the federal level to the side of the APC through their triumph in the just concluded presidential election where General Muhammadu Buhari was elected President of Nigeria.

Every Lagosian is full of high hopes that they will now enjoy from the government at the centre under General Buhari. But it will be a sad story if for one reason or the other, APC loses the governorship election to the PDP come Saturday.

It is no secret that Buhari has expressed his unhappiness with the manner the various PDP-led administrations abandoned Lagos because of politics. He had promised to make amends, if elected president.

Also, during many of his campaign tours in Lagos, Buhari told Lagosians to disregard the wrong claims by some persons and groups against Asiwaju Bola Tinubu that he corruptly enriched himself with Lagos money. Buhari affirmed that Tinubu made his money in America before coming to Nigeria, having worked in an oil company and even rose to the position of a treasurer. It is on record that Tinubu lived in various European capitals during the infamous Abacha war against the National Democratic Coalition, NADECO.

Let us revisit the death of Engineer Funso Williams. I can categorically say that there was no time there was war between Tinubu and Funso because they were already on the same page as far as development of Lagos is concerned. If there is anyone that should be suspected of the death of Funso Williams, they should be those whom Engr. Williams sponsored and put in positions to further his governorship cause but who later came back to contest the governorship primary with him in the PDP.

Another wrong impression I will also like to correct is the allegation against Tinubu that he installed his daughter as the Iyaloja-General. This is a mischievous allegation. For the records, the late Alhaja Abibatu Mogaji, the former Iyaloja-General was our patron. Her grand-daughter, the present Iyaloja had been representing her grandmother at various functions for more than six years before her death.

That is the truth. If all those who made money elsewhere or in government are patriotic like Asiwaju Tinubu who is investing all his resources to build and improve Lagos and Nigeria, the number of the unemployed would have reduced tremendously. More than three hundred men and women currently work in his hotel, not to talk of other companies he has. These explanations are necessary for those peddling false information about how Asiwaju Tinubu acquired his wealth.

As for the easterners in Lagos, they should have a rethink about their plot to assist PDP win the governorship election in Lagos. Anybody or group who wants Lagos to be in opposition again after suffering for sixteen years at the national level is an enemy of Lagos State. The Igbo should remember that no part of Nigeria has given them peace like the southwest. They (Igbo) enjoyed everything belonging to the south-westerners, including free education, in their states.

During the civil war, when some of them abandoned their properties in Yorubaland and ran to the East, the Yoruba kept their property which they met intact when the war ended. It was not like that in other parts of the country, even in Port Harcourt, which is nearer to their states, their brothers there divided their properties within themselves before their arrival.

Why the Igbo hate the Yoruba is baffling to any reasonable person. The Igbo should go out there and vote for progress of Lagos State by voting for APC.

Finally, it is not correct to say that Asiwaju Tinubu has been sponsoring all our activities. We fight for anybody or any group that we identified as having the interest of Nigerians at heart. Tinubu is one of those people.

We have also been promoting the Buhari agenda because we know that his government will spend half of the country’s budget on Nigerians. We have been assured that Buhari will change things for the better by his brother and physician, Alhaji Sasa of Ojo in Ibadan, Oyo State.

Any reasonable person will agree with us that if Tinubu took government money like ignorant people want us to believe, Fashola would not have done what he is doing now in terms of projects that have transformed the state.

•Ologbese, a maritime expert, is the President-General of The Association of Good Leadership Advocates Peace Development, Lagos.