Jimi Agbaje, Lagos State governorship candidate of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has said that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in Lagos State has spent N7 trillion without visible improved infrastructural development, stressing that markets in the state are in deplorable condition.
Agbaje, who made the remark during the unveiling of 2018 Atiku Traders Cup, sponsored by Unit2Unit Global Enlightenment Initiative, a Non-Government Organisation (NGO) in Lagos, said the APC administration only knew how to shut down markets at will and diminishing the traders in the process.
He affirmed that his mission in Alausa (government house) would be to liberate the state and bring true freedom and democracy to the people.
Agbaje lamented that the APC government had been collecting money from the market traders sitting in their palace while the traders would keep begging them to have the markets reopened, pointing out that the time to change guards had come.
Agbaje said the struggle undertaken by Atiku Abubakar, the party’s presidential candidate, and Peter Obi, his running mate at the national level, was what he was embarking upon in Lagos, which he said, was to free the people from bondage.
On a lighter mood, he addressed himself as a trader, adding that he was at the event in two capacities, as the PDP gubernatorial candidate in Lagos and as a representative of Prince Uche Secondus, the PDP National Chairman, adding that he would not run away from his responsibility, if elected into power.
Dr. Vincent Anyigor, National Coordinator, Unit2Unit Global Enlightenment Initiative, said that the NGO was formed to ensure that what happened in 2015 presidential election, where out of the 119,973 polling units in the North, PDP was alleged to have scored zero votes, would not happen again.
Agbaje, who also spoke during the ‘Experience 13’ organised by the House on the Rock Metropolitan Church in Lagos at the weekend, stated that after 20 years, Lagos yearns for freedom from godfatherism, dilapidated schools, hopelessness, poverty and terrible traffic.
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According to him, a state under the control of one man would not augur well for democracy, while charging Lagosians to use the instrumentality of the ballot to free themselves.
He stated that as a megacity, Lagos must rightly be compared with others around the world, lamenting that sadly the comparisons showed that Lagos had remained one of the worst cities to live in the world as it presently ranked 138 of 140 global cities.
The PDP candidate promised to harness the entrepreneurial capacity of Lagosians to ensure that the state’s economy grew rapidly and competitively to ensure sustainable businesses were built to create and support the employment.