N30 Billion Hotel: You’re A Liar, Lagos APC Replies PDP

Posted by African Examiner Featured, Lagos, Latest Headlines, News Wednesday, October 2nd, 2013

Lagos state governor Babatunde Fashola

The Lagos State Chapter of the All Progressive Congress, APC, has denounced claims by the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, that Governor Babatunde Fashola owned 60 percent shares in the N30 billion Intercontinental Lagos Hotel unveiled three days ago.

APC described the Bamanga Tukur faction of Lagos PDP as a band of irresponsible characters that excelled in trading lies and gossip as political wares and warned the party that nothing would save it from final extinction.

The party was reacting to the allegation of the factional Lagos PDP Publicity secretary, Taofik Gani that Governor Fashola owns 60 per cent of the shares of Intercontinental Lagos Hotel, the tallest hotel in West Africa.

In a release, signed by the Lagos State Interim Publicity Secretary of the APC, Joe Igbokwe, the party said that it was the height of irresponsibility for the PDP that called itself a party to engage in disingenuous lie peddling, hauling of infantile gossip and unsubstantiated forgeries just because it longed for a political position it could never achieve through more honest means.

It advised Lagosians to treat Lagos PDP as an unserious bunch of gossips that had shown no knowledge of governing Lagos besides salivating on how to milk Lagos, in the known tradition of the PDP, which has left Nigeria wrecked and prostrate today.

“It is horrifying, indeed, highly alarming that a party should shamelessly engage in such dubious, irresponsible and callous peddling of puerile lies for the dubious profit it aims to harvest from this. The ownership of Intercontinental Lagos Hotel is the Milan Group, which is a reputable company with long history of doing business and a verifiable company and ownership structure.

“In establishing this record-breaking hotel, it drew some support from the Lagos State Government and Wema Bank. How this translates to Fashola owning 60 per cent of the ownership is best known to the minds of the grim reapers that will not cease from hoping that by sheer con arts, they will corner Lagos and add it to the many states and the federal states their party members had thoroughly wrecked and ran into clear bankruptcy.

“As, we await the Lagos PDP to come forward with the proof of their wild and specious allegation, we will not help but point out to Lagosians the dubiety of the characters that represent the PDP in Lagos. They are asking Governor Fashola to declare his assets publicly while they never saw anything wrong with the position of President Jonathan that he won’t give a damn about the general outcry of Nigerians that he declares his assets publicly in the face of the gargantuan corruption that has pervaded the PDP governance of Nigeria,’ it stated.

According to APC, “we dismiss as empty, spurious and infantile the threat by the crisis-ridden PDP to mobilise Lagosians against Governor Fashola and we dare them to be man enough and live up to their resolve. We wonder how an unpopular party, with few disillusioned members, facing monumental division, with a notorious history of corrupt governance and with nothing to show for the huge revenue that had accrued to the country for the past fourteen years can successfully mobilize Lagosians against a governor that had made Lagos a reference point in good governance not only in Nigeria but in Africa and in deed the entire world.”

The party added that by now, Lagosians knew the mean ways and dirty tactics of this faction of Lagos PDP, which is nothing more than gossip trading, rumour mongering and scare crowing, saying that coupled with the childish art of denying the obvious, “we want to let the leftovers of the crisis-torn PDP know that Lagosians are far ahead of them and will mete out a worse electoral defeat for a party that has bankrupted Nigeria to the extent that allocations to states are not being paid for the past three months even when Nigeria still reaps handsomely from the high prices of oil.

“For a party that has left our infrastructures dead, it smacks of naivety to believe that Lagosians are not smart to know that all that the PDP has left Nigeria after fourteen years is poverty, misery, insecurity, as well as the array of obscenely rich party men who feed fat from the resources that would have bettered the lots of Nigerians.”

It added that “for a party that has successfully reduced life expectancy in Nigeria from 70 when they came to powder, to 42 today and after looting over N200 trillion to now become a thief catcher in Lagos says something about the PDP and what it stands for, which is dubiety and fraud.

“We urge the Lagos PDP faction to live true to its resolve and possibly test its non-existing popularity with Lagosians, after very humbling electoral failures, by mobilizing Lagosians against Fashola. We assure them that Lagosians will surely meet them on the streets.”