By Dele Ade
A pro-democracy advocate and frontline human right activist, Comrade Razaq Olokoba has described commencement of electioneering for Lagos 2023 governorship election now as, “act of sabotage, diversionary and criminal,” warning those spearheading the exercise to desist or face the wrath of the populace using the instrumentality of the law.
Olokoba, who is the National President and Convener of the Campaign for Dignity in Governance (CDG), a group that consists of over 70 other rights organizations across the country and beyond said in a release Wednesday in Lagos that, he would not hesitate to mobilise members of all the organizations under his umbrella to resist any attempt to distract the smooth running of government in Lagos state.
He said it is embarrassing and disturbing to discover that those who should know the workings of the Electoral Law are the same characters that are contravening it, warning that, “they should desist forthwith as our teeming members would not allow any person or group of persons to hide under any diabolical means to jump the gun or put the cart before the horse in the current dispensation in Lagos State.”
The concerned youth leader who said, this reaction was warranted by a report credited to one Pastor Sam Ogedengbe, who was said to have hit the town touting that, “a Muslim should emerge as the Lagos State governor in 2023,” pointed out that, “any discussion or debate about the year 2023 governorship in Lagos State is not only pre-mature and needless, but also very diversionary and out of place for now.”
Pastor Ogedengbe of the All Christian Leaders and Ministers Forum, made the remark during his group’s annual convention, thanksgiving and graduation weekend at Abule-Egba, Lagos, where he boasted that, without doubt, the next governor would be a Muslim disclosing that, he was one of those who clamoured for a Christian governor after the end of Governor Babatunde Fashola’s tenure, which produced ex-Governor Akinwunmi Ambode and incumbent Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu.
Olokoba expressed sadness that, Ogedengbe, who was said to have served a former governor as Special Assistant on Christian Religion could not get his fact right to remember that, both Tinubu and Fashola spent 16 years in office and not eight years, lecturing the cleric that, “the good people of Lagos are so sophisticated, socially exposed and politically enlightened beyond myopic and shallow consideration for religious or tribal sentiments.”
What the people of Lagos are yearning for, Olokoba disclosed, “is nothing but good governance in which the life would be worth living for all and sundry irrespective of who is providing the dividends,” urging the people to ignore Ogedengbe and others like him and support Governor Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu to be focussed and concentrate on the good job he is doing.
“What I think should be uppermost in our mind is the performance and achievement of Sanwo-Olu in office across all the sectors like transportation system (rail, road and water), workers’ welfare, education, healthcare delivery, housing, security and peaceful co-existence among others.
“Any discussion about 2023 in Lagos now is nothing but an idle talk from some idle minds. It is a product of an unproductive mind. They should be ignored. The governor should be encouraged to do more by appreciating his performance and achievement. He should be supported in his bid to rebuild the state that was destroyed by the hoodlums during the #EndSARS protest. He should be cooperated with to completely win the war against COVID-19. We admit people have the right of expression in democracy. But the case of 2023 is about a bridge we are yet to reach. When we get there, God would guide us how to cross it,” Olokoba sermonised.