I cried when I saw the destruction in Lagos —El-Rufai

The governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, said he cried after he saw the level of destruction in Lagos following the violence that erupted as a result of the endSARS protest that ravaged the state a few weeks ago.

El-Rufai who spoke when he visited his Lagos counterpart, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, praised the Lagos governor for quickly stopping the protest as it had degenerated into violence.

El-Rufai visited Sanwo-Olu to empathise with him on the mayhem that occurred in the state during the protest aimed at ending police brutality.

The Kaduna governor noted that the peaceful protest was hijacked by people who thrived on violence and had infiltrated the protest to achieve their agenda of causing large-scale destruction on public and private assets in the state.

Read also: Kaduna gov, El-Rufai, reveals those behind hijack of #EndSARS protests

“I have spent time to see some of the pictures of the destruction done on public properties in Lagos and I nearly shed tears. Anyone who cares about development and progress will cry after seeing what has been done to public facilities and people’s investments that provided jobs to youths.

“While expressing anger on police brutality may be right, but destroying public properties, which will have to be rebuilt by using money that is needed to invest in other public infrastructure, under the guise of protest, is nothing but self-destruction.

“The Lagos and the Federal Governments will have to re-invest scarce resources that could have been used for other things to rebuild the vandalised facilities,” the Kaduna helmsman said.

Responding, Sanwo-Olu advised fellow state chief executives to avoid unnecessary spending so that they could have more resources to meet the basic needs of the people.

“We need to look at our expenditure profile as chief executives of our states and ask ourselves, where can I cut the red tape? What can I do away with so as to increase the revenue of my state or even make available more money for my state?

“What I have done till date is that I have not purchased any single official vehicle for myself, for any of my personal staff or any of my family members from the government purse. If you see me have a convoy of 10 vehicles, these are all vehicles I was using during my campaigns,” he said.

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