Sen. Olamilekan Adeola (Lagos West) on Thursday said Lagos had made continued progress owing to good governance delivered by the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Adeola made the assertion in a statement issued in Lagos by Mr Kayode Odunaro, his Special Adviser on Media.
He was reacting to a statement made by Mr Jimi Agbaje, Governorship candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) that Lagos had been under APC bondage and needed to be freed by PDP in 2019.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Agbaje, while flagging off his campaign recently had said godfatherism in APC had been the bane of development of Lagos and that he was set to rescue the state in 2019.
Reacting, Adeola said the states controlled by the PDP were the ones under bondage and not Lagos.
The lawmaker said the 16 years of PDP leadership brought nothing to Nigeria but the impoverishment of the nation.
Adeola said realising that the state had freed itself from the failed system imposed by the PDP, the then ruling party (PDP) tried everything to undermine the progress and the interests of the state.
The senator alleged that all attempts by the PDP to capture Lagos from “the progressives’’ while it was the ruling party, failed.
He urged residents to reject the PDP in 2019 as it had nothing to offer but reverse the progress made by the state under APC.
“The records are there that over the years of our nascent democracy since 1999, the PDP-led administrations have done everything to undermine Lagos State.
“We had the debilitating and illegal withholding of Local Government allocations for several months.
“The deliberate and wicked abandonment of Federal Government critical infrastructure located in Lagos State caused untold hardship for Lagosians, ‘’ Adeola said.
He also recalled the blocking of assistance to Lagos State in view of its status as a former Federal Capital Territory and economic nerve centre of the nation.
Adeola pointed out that successive “progressive” administrations in Lagos had positioned the state as a model of development, saying that a master plan put in place under the Asiwaju Bola Tinubu administration had been faithfully implemented by the succeeding administrations.
“Lagos has no comparable rival so far in all the PDP governed states.
“The quantum leap of the Internally Generated Revenue of Lagos State from about N14 billion in 1999 to over N34 billion per month as of today has no equal in the loot-prone PDP states over the same period.
“Neither is there any developments in those states comparable to what the Lagos Government has done to address development challenges of a mega city,’’ the senator said.
Adeola urged residents to continue to keep faith with the APC as it was the party to continue to deliver democratic dividends. (NAN)