Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, SAN, days back, flagged off the 2015 Agric Value Chains Empowerment programme with an assertion that security and the economy are two major issues that would determine the voting choice of the electorates in the forthcoming general elections.
The Governor who spoke at the Johnson Agiri Agricultural Complex, Oko Oba, Agege, where 3,529 beneficiaries were empowered with different agricultural support and inputs, added that the issues of security and the economy will determine the choice of voters in the next elections.
Explaining the issues in detail, Fashola said the difference between the All Progressives Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party in terms of security came to the fore on Monday as some people who were supposedly carrying out a rally in support of the President and their gubernatorial candidate in Lagos were brandishing knives, cudgels, and dangerous weapons and harassing innocent citizens.
He said the PDP supporters rally on Lagos roads when placed side by side with the solidarity march organized by the APC on 7th March shows clearly the difference between the two parties because during the APC rally, there were no reports of violence and harassment of citizens.
“Yesterday, I received telephone calls, text messages from residents who explained to me. I am sorry about the pain and trauma they put you through, but the residents consistently complained yesterday that they were traumatized by those people who supposedly were carrying out a rally in support of the President and their gubernatorial candidate.
“So, instead of canvassing for your votes and showing you why their record of service is better, they were showing you knives, cudgels, and dangerous weapons. Some residents phoned that they were banging on their cars. Yesterday they also showed the difference between us”, he said.
Fashola reiterated that the work of a government is to protect its citizens and not to terrorize them, maintaining that for those who still say that they do not know what the issues in the next elections are, Monday’s event has brought the issue of security sharply into focus.
He explained that the peace and safety that all residents of Lagos have enjoyed for eight years is now at risk going by the kind of people who support the opposition party and their Presidential candidate who came out on Monday, adding that this could become a daily experience except Lagosians come out to vote en-masse for a party that would not traumatize them with security apparatus.
“Unless you come out and vote. You are the employers, unless you come out massively on March 28, April 11 that is the only way God will forbid that kind of thing in Lagos. It is your vote that will change it. A vote for Buhari would put an end to this kind of abuse of state power. A vote for Ambode will continue the security that we have built and protected you with for the last eight years”, the Governor stressed.
Adding that the only reason why Lagos State is working is because the PDP has never governed it and going by the testimonies of some of the Agric Chain Empowerment beneficiaries, who are not indigenes, Lagos is where it is better. He reiterated that with APC governed states, certainly, there will be improvements and that the difference between APC governed states and PDP governor states is that the APC states are as good as their records.
“If you go to all the APC states, even the people who left them and joined us are the ones that have been doing well. Only Lagos and Rivers States are building Intra City Rail in Nigeria. It is development and progress that unites Governor Rotimi Amaechi and I”, Fashola said.