The 2023 governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Lagos State, Olajide Adediran, popularly known as Jandor has vowed to end what he described as the 24-year monopoly of a former governor of the state, Bola Tinubu.
“We will come in and do things differently. The problem of Lagos is that we have one head thinking for the state of Lagos for the past 24 years,” Jandor said on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme on Thursday.
The PDP governorship candidate in Lagos also accused Tinubu, the 2023 presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) of removing “performing governors” in the state.
Jandor said though former governor Babatunde Fashola survived an attempt to remove him in 2011 and returned for second term, his successor, Akinwunmi Ambode couldn’t survive a plot that saw him removed after a single term in 2019.
He promised to decentralise developments across the 20 local government areas of the state if elected in the forthcoming polls.
“In our very first year in office, we will do a whole lot across Lagos. We need to decentralise development. Everybody comes to the centre for greener pastures but if you give the development where they are, they will actually stay there.
“We will do a whole lot because we will be coming in as independent government; the one not tied to the apron string of anybody and that will allow us to make Lagos wealth that we only hear now work for Lagos,” he said.
Jandor lamented what he described as hegemony and monopoly of the state by Tinubu, who was Lagos governor after Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999.
“The problem is this monopoly that we need to break. If we have a governor that is independent, we won’t have this problem and that is what we represent,” he said.
Jandor also slammed the incumbent governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu over “failure” to allegedly utilise the resources of the state to improve the education, health and transport sectors.
“A government with these resources and the statistics still not speaking to the resources shows failure and the reason is not farfetched; there is a monopoly that we need to break and allow fresh ideas and new thinking. Until we do this, we will continue to have the same report and this cosmetic of people saying they are working,” he said.
In December 2021, Jandor, the leader of the Lagos4Lagos movement within the APC in Lagos dumped the ruling party with his followers and was received into the PDP by former Senate President, Bukola Saraki. He would later get the PDP governorship ticket in the state.
Since Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999, Ambode is the only former governor of Lagos who was in office for a single term. Tinubu was governor between 1999 and 2007 before he handed over to Fashola, who is now the Minister of Works and Housing, was in office as governor from 2007 to 2015.
Ambode took over in 2015 but lost his re-election at the primary level in the 2019 electioneering process due to intra-party squabbles as APC strongman in Lagos (Tinubu) was reported to have favoured Sanwo-Olu.
Sanwo-Olu clinched the party’s ticket and won the 2019 governorship election and has again secured APC’s ticket for his re-election in the 2023 polls.
Since he ended his single term in 2019, Ambode has not been seen at political or social functions with his predecessors – Tinubu and Fashola. He has also not been seen at events with the incumbent governor.
The former governor has also been reticent at the few times he was pictured at APC events at the national level like in May 2021 when he was appointed the deputy chairman of the South-West sub-committee of the Contact and Strategy Committee of the ruling party.
There were reports that Ambode would contest the party’s governorship ticket with Sanwo-Olu at the primary in May 2022. Rather, his ally, Wale Oluwo, threw his hat in the ring but lost to Sanwo-Olu.
Unlike Fashola and Sanwo-Olu, Ambode has not publicly endorsed Tinubu’s 2023 presidential ambition and has not been seen at any political event linked with Tinubu’s aspiration for Aso Rock but the weeks ahead of the February 25 presidential poll are still much very pregnant.
