A pan-Lagos Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), Egbe Omoluabi Eko (Egbe), has reasoned that any electioneering for 2023 governorship election in Lagos State now is nothing but a product of an idle mind saying, “nobody with any productive venture in mind would venture into such a diversionary adventure at this particular period.”
President of the group, Comrade Ekundayo Ibrahim, in a release issued, on Tuesday, in Ikorodu, was, however, of the conviction that no reasonable resident of the state would take such a campaigner serious, warning that, “nothing should be done to distract the performing Governor Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu from the laudable project of state building he has embarked upon since 2019.”
The statement came on the heels of a submission of the National President of the All Christian Leaders and Ministers Forum, Pastor Sam Ogedengbe, that a Muslim should emerge as the Lagos State governor in 2023, boasting that he was one of those who clamoured for a Christian governor after the end of Governor Babatunde Fashola’s tenure, which produced former Governor Akinwunmi Ambode and incumbent Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu.
The cleric was reported to have made the remark in Lagos at the weekend during his group’s annual convention, thanksgiving and graduation, at which he declared that, without doubt, the next governor would be Muslim.
The group expressed disappointment in the cleric, who was once the former Senior Special Assistant to the Lagos State Governor on Christian Religion, that he could not put facts together to arrive at true situation of events that, while Tinubu and Fashola spent 16 years of four terms in office, Ambode and Sanwo-Olu, would, by 2023 have spent just eight (8) years as in two terms.
Besides, the group said, the Pastors efforts are exercise in futility as the time for such a permutation is not ripe, explaining that, such exercise has a laid down rule to follow as stipulated in the Electoral Act guiding the conduct of an election in the country.
“What should be paramount in the mind of all well-meaning people residing in the state should be how to support governor Sanwo-Olu to rebuild the state destroyed by the vandals during the ill-fated #EndSARS protesters and the effect of COVID-19 in the economy of the state,” the group also pointed out, while urging all patriotic Lagos State residents to shun all forms of detraction and cooperate with Sanwo-Olu by encouraging him to keep his eyes fixedly on the ball.
The focus now is supposed to be on the achievements of the governor on the various sectors of the economy like road/rail/water transportation, provision of houses for the people, guaranteeing security of lives and property, improved education sector, healthcare delivery and conducive environment for both local and international investments.
“Anything outside the above mentioned ventures is meant for the waste bin because it would be counted as irrelevant, diversionary, irritant and undemocratic,” the group concluded.
