- Warns Buhari against relying on former governor
Gboyega Akinsanmi
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has berated the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, for celebrating a proposal to add 30 megawatts to Gurara-hydro power plant.
However, the party said Lagos State under the administration of Governor Akinwunmi Ambode has undergone improvement and transformation in all areas Fashola abandoned.
This was contained in a statement the Publicity Secretary of the state PDP, Mr. Taofik Gani, issued at the weekend, warning President Muhammadu Buhari against relying on what it described as Fashola’s unverified claims of achievements as minister.
Under a period of 17 months, the party attested to dramatic transformation the Ambode administration has brought to all areas of the state that the former governor refused to make strategic intervention at the time of need.
Although it denied adopting the Ambode administration, the party admitted that Lagos residents “can now see signs of government presence in some erstwhile abandoned areas under Fashola.”
He urged the president against relying on Fashola’s unverified claims of achievements, noting that as the former governor of Lagos State, Fashola “has the style and practice of promoting mediocrity, propaganda and inappropriate speculation.”
It gravely concluded that in the opinion of the Lagos State chapter of PDP, Fashola “remains a misfit as a lawyer to occupy such combined ministries of engineering specialties.
“This patriotic advice is on the heels of the minister celebrating a proposed injection of a mere 30 megawatts of power from the Gurara-hydro power plant, when indeed the minister has collected monumental funding well enough to have injected over 500 megawatts into the National grid.”
It described Fashola’s attempt to celebrate 30 megawatts as laughable, though claimed that because Fashola should rather admit failure having mismanaged the power ministry “to now cause a drop of supply from over 6000 megawatts when he took over to now less than 2000 megawatts.
“We sincerely advise President Muhammadu Buhari to be very weary of the deceptive skills of Fashola who will usually hype and celebrate even mediocrity. Fashola has penchant for misrepresenting facts of his achievements in government and would always rationalise obvious inadequacies.
“As governor of Lagos State, he enjoyed unprecedented revenues and donations, yet left many services untouched or unfinished. He however deliberately funded his pro-Fashola media and commentators so much that pseudo and exaggerated achievements were ascribed to him.
“He employed this model to promote his eight-year government of mediocrity. Fashola ended up making Lagos State be the biggest debtor with local and foreign debts well over N1trillion.”
