Fashola : The giant with clay feet

By Joseph Edgar …

This must have been a traumatic week for Babatunde Fashola, the immediate past governor of Lagos State. He had come out in all his ethical glory to attempt to clean up his much maligned reputation by stating the facts and protecting his legacy as one of the most forthright politicians of our time.

He failed woefully. He instead reduced himself to a mere mortal in our eyes and crawled back into his hole reduced to a an ant that if not careful could be squashed and swept into the dustbin of history. How for the life of me would he attempt in that arrogant letter to justify the expenditure of public funds in the building of a website. This beat my imagination and really opened up his nakedness in the market place for all to see the warts in his bum bum

As I went through his letter, I could see how he struggled to load the websites with features that would justify the huge expenditure. His aides would have been sweating as they brought about suggestions to fill up the gap. They would have said, ‘sir, add browser, Oya put google plus, mention YouTube linked call features, Oya calculate how much is that now’.
The whole thing reminds me of when we travel out of Lagos on official assignment and are trying to justify expenditure to the auditors, you start working to the answer, since you do not want to refund any money. Refund ke, money that had been spent on drinks and ladies of the night who will not give receipts for services rendered. So in trying to cover that cost you start to inflate legitimate expenditure, N3,500 for a bottle of beer, 100,000 for room after all it’s Abuja and not Shomolu, 20,000 for a plate of rice. That is the folly of the Fashola mishap.

Niyi, his Commissioner for ICT is my friend. We used to play football in Gbagada those early days of innocence. Then one day, I saw him in the papers as Fasholas Commissiioner. I am sure he would have been part of this scam and also integral to the attempt at hoodwinking Lagosians. I am looking for him to give him a piece of my mind, since I would not have the opportunity to tell Fashola himself that he should have just kept quiet instead of issuing this lame and disrespectful attempt at rebuttal.

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He agreed that the website cost him N78m, but the firm came out to say they actually got N3m although I have heard N12m in some quarters. If this could happen on a mere website, then won’t we believe the stories we hear of the bridges.

Fashola to my mind still remains an enigma. In his two terms he redefined public governance, taking the mantle from the great Asiwaju and pushing the boundaries. Delivering on his promises and attempting to make Lagos truly a centre of excellence, but a saint he is not. I am ready to forgive him like I have forgiven Akpabio who though enmeshed in all sort of dirt had turned Akwa Ibom from a backwater into paradise. Fashola and Akpabio stand tall in my estimation as some of the most gifted leaders we have produced in recent times.

However, this does not give Fashola the moral platform to expect us to accept this kind of posturing hence my believe that he should have just kept quiet instead of trying to leverage on his perceived popularity and strong moral equity to throw this hogwash at us. He should have just kept quiet.

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