Re-Hamzat and the Future of Lagos: Sycophants At Work – My Final Words

By Mobolaji Sanusi

Ordinarily, the reply to my last week’s column’s few lines on Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu by his media lackey would have been overlooked for a reason: The administration was installed by our revered political patriarch, President Bola Tinubu, GCFR. But this counter-response is necessary in order to correct some embedded misinformation.

Therefore, I consider it pertinent to knit together a few paragraphs to put the record straight:

One Tayo Ogunbiyi, Director, Public Enlightenment and Community Relations in the Lagos State Ministry of Information and Strategy whose byline adorned the response, started on a false note when he stated that “there seems to be no other reason for the opinion article written by Mobolaji Sanusi, the one who was fired at The Lagos State Signage and Advertising Agency (LASAA) for alleged incompetence.” Whoever authorized the response, alongside the author, must have been suffering from institutional or historical amnesia.

Why a “supposed director” of such an important ministry meant to inform and educate the public could be so institutionally uninformed is quite startling when he and his political heads could have easily approached the Public Service Office (PSO), to inquire about my service records to know the circumstances regarding how I left the Lagos State Signage and Advertisement Agency(LASAA) in December 2019.

This brings to the forefront, the level of ingrained institutional rot that the Sanwo-Olu government has turned the mainstream civil service that was hitherto an epitome of discipline into.

To properly educate this uninformed official, I was not ‘fired’ due to any ‘alleged incompetence.’ Rather, my leadership of that agency remains, to date, a reference point in leadership integrity, regulatory discipline, institutional accountability and progress. More importantly, let it be known that l left the agency with an unbowed head after the expiration of my renewable statutory tenure of four years. To date, I have the record of being the ONLY former managing director of the agency to have spent three months more than the stated statutory four years in my appointment letter and without any blemish. With all sense of humility, my record is res ipsa loquitur in that agency.

Comparatively, my successor, Adedamola Docemo, who was gleefully appointed by Governor Sanwo-Olu, was curiously removed from the position by his benefactor barely three years into his four-year term of office. The reasons behind this, if not gross incompetence, should be revealed to interested members of the public by Ogunbiyi and his team of media minders.

The author engaged in sophistry where he made uncorroborated accusations that l “attempted to project speculative political alignments, introduce unfounded insinuations regarding the working relationship within the Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu administration in Lagos State.”

By this, he fabricated what was not said or insinuated by stating that my article suggested “tension, rivalry, or institutional dissonance between the Governor of Lagos State and his Deputy, Dr Kadri Obafemi Hamzat, who is also the Candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the 2027 Governorship Election.” I did not suggest anything near this and this ‘senior official’ of this administration would have done well by showing excerpts of where I did or insinuated this except he’s indirectly exposing the tensions that outsiders like me and others might not be aware to be ongoing between the duo.

Finally, my intention is not to engage and will never be to engage in a public spat with a governor installed by our revered president and political patriarch; and this is why I will withhold any further comments, not even on Ogunbiyi’s allusion to “expansion in infrastructure” as being the thrust of the Sanwo-Olu administration’s achievements.

I rest my case.

*Mobolaji Sanusi Esq, former MD/CEO of Lagos State Signage & Advertisement Agency is managing partner at AMS RELIABLE SOLICITORS.