What Is Happening In Lagos Today

                             

President Buhari is coming to Lagos to commission a bus stop built by the state government for internal transportation in Lagos city. Never mind that it is called a Bus Terminal, isn’t it a crying shame that, of all things, our President would be commissioning a bus stop, not a single federal government project in Lagos after these years?

But the irony is that it’s another deception of Lagos and the South West, if we recall that, 34 years ago, it was this same Buhari, when he seized power to disrupt the 2nd Republic Government of Shagari, who stopped the Lagos Metro Rail project well intended by former Governor Lateef Jakande to re-position the internal transportation architecture of Lagos as a growing city.

Never mind that he made Lagos to lose almost $50m in the process for breach of contract to the foreign partners of the project, but by now, Lagos wouldn’t have been talking about a bus transportation system and hectic traffic situation. This would have changed the transportation landscape in all of Western Nigeria, but for the Buhari blunder.

But that is even besides the issue. What is happening in Lagos is that Tinubu settled another deal to support Buhari for a second tenure and he has been brought to Lagos for a show of crowd support.

In the first tenure, Tinubu wanted to be Vice President but when he was shot down by the Saraki and Kwankwaso group, he settled for Osinbajo for VP and the possibility of installing the President of Senate and Speaker of the House of Reps. He got the VP but lost the National Assembly leadership positions through non cooperation by the party leadership who felt it would be too much to let one man have VP, Senate President and Speaker. Tinubu had been most unhappy about this and you can recall the face offs between his wife, Senator Olufemi Tinubu and Senator Dino Melaye severally on the floor of the assembly.

Following his poor performance records, the rate of insecurity and spate of killings across the country, Buhari had by shy to announce his intention to recontest in 2019 but he has called Tinubu in again to help him secure the West.

So, Tinubu has struck another deal. This time, for the control of the party leadership and Buhari had to publicly endorse it. That accounts for Buhari’s recent pronouncement against the return of John Oyegun as chairman of the party.

That done, Tinubu is now giving Buhari the lease to flag off his campaign for second term, even in the face of obvious lack of capacity to govern well and the excruciating sufferings Nigerians are going through.

The whole idea is to organise mass crowd around Buhari in Lagos to give Nigerians and the world the impression that he is still wanted. As expected, Lagos has called out workers by declaring a public holiday. The 57 local government councils will sponsor the transportation of thousands of market women and area boys in several buses to make the rally. Similarly too, neighboring Ogun, Oyo, Osun and Ondo APC governments will sponsor hundreds of people to boost the crowd.