The Governorship Candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Mr. Jimi Agbaje, has responded to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who mocked him for adopting the FREEDOM slogan for his 2019 aspiration.
“Pharaoh, you must let our people go!” Agbaje said, sequel to reports that quoted Tinubu as saying on Monday that the PDP politician should go and take up apprenticeship as a vulcaniser or tailor if he wanted FREEDOM.
“Apparently, the APC leader has lost touch with reality,” Agbaje said in a press statement by his Director of Media and Publicity, Felix Oboagwina. “Otherwise he would know that like the children of Israel, Lagosians are groaning under the taskmaster that Tinubu and his cronies have turned themselves into in this state that should rate as Nigeria’s foremost.”
Recalling that the biblical Pharaoh had finally conceded liberty to the Israelites only after several vicious plagues, Agbaje said, Lagosians would be liberated after the people delivered an electoral disgrace to APC in 2019.
He also said that the slogan mirrored the same spirit that moved Nelson Mandela to declare his long walk to freedom in an Apartheid South Africa.
Agbaje said: “We identify with our vulcanisers, tailors and all craftsmen who have the joy of duly-earned freedom after their apprenticeship. But it is apparent that, unlike them, those who have gotten used to filthy lucre and the dividends of corruption cannot savour the joy that comes with the legitimate sweat and labour of hardworking artisans.”
According to him, the FREEDOM theme was not a coinage that he and his team plucked from the air, but it had come from gauging the mood of Lagos and realising that the citizens nurtured a deep hunger to be liberated from the severe vicissitudes and subhuman conditions inflicted on them by the ruling clique since 1999.
Naming Tinubu as the head of a vested interest that had turned Lagos into a private enterprise, the PDP candidate blamed the ruling APC for the state’s dismal global rating in housing, security and livability.
Today, Agbaje lamented, because of misgovernment by APC, Lagos waterways and lagoons had become a major spot for people committing suicide, a factor that had corrupted its reputation as the state of aquatic splendour.
“The happiness index of the state continues on a downward spiral,” he lamented, “And the reasons are obviously because of the failure of government.”
”You wake up one morning and find that like the Jews in Poland during the Second War, you have a toll gate caging you in; and you must pay a toll to leave and return to your home and birthplace in which you used to freely move, you need freedom from those tolls,” Agbaje said.
“When you find yourself assailed by loads and loads of filth because of an unreasonable and inefficient waste disposal regime, then you desire to be free to breathe fresh air in a hygienic environment.
“When you find yourself wasting precious man-hours everyday in a traffic jam, you need freedom.
“When you are a local government chairman and instead of getting full allocation from the Federal purse to operate, but instead you are made to sign for a minuscule portion of your council’s funds and you don’t know what happens to the bulk, you need freedom.
“When you find that your roads are in a terrible state because of a government that cherishes the high returns of gigantic contracts instead of paying attention to basic maintenance of tertiary roads, then you want freedom to enjoy smooth roads.
“When you enter into political office with lofty visions and programmes and you find you cannot deliver because someone somewhere has compromised your initiative, you need freedom!
“When you go to the polls and your votes do not count, you need freedom!
“When you find your access to healthcare hampered by an inefficient hospital system and that even the cost of dying is priced well beyond your reach as a common man because of exorbitant mortuary fees, you want freedom for you and your family to enjoy such a basic need.”
