Matters Arising On Ambode’s Pettiness Of Replacing Gani Fawehinmi’s Statue Built By Fashola At Ojota
By Adeoba Michaels
One of the highpoints of the administration of former Lagos State Governor, Mr Babatunde Raji Fashola, (SAN) was the reclamation of abandoned public spaces inhabited by hoodlums and transforming them into recreation parks or landmark sites to honour living heroes or past giants who made Lagos proud.
Fashola honoured the late legal luminary, Chief Gani Fawehinmi,(SAN) and developed Gani Fawehinmi Park, Ojota popular known as Freedom Park and erected a statue of the Ondo-born Senior Advocate of the masses to immortalise the struggles of the fierce human rights fighter and the primus defender of the downtrodden.
The civil society community and human rights activists who were in the trenches to fight for the rights of the oppressed hailed Fashola for honouring Gani and for providing a spacious, strategic location where protesters can gather and ventilate their anger on the recklessness of the political class and other obnoxious public policies.
Gani Fawehinmi park made global headlines in January 2012 during the Occupy Nigeria petrol subsidy removal protest against the government of former President Goodluck Jonathan.
The Aluta spirit of Gani was invoked at Ojota as thousands of citizens brought the government on its kneels.
The incumbent governor Akinwunmi Ambode never left anyone in doubt that he is on a mission to demolish Fashola’s legacies immediately he assumed office.
The Gani Fawehinmi park ‘remodeling’ was one of the needless projects he embarked just to undo Fashola whose fame had gone global as a great performer.
Under the guise of curious remodeling, Ambode removed the statue of Gani built by Fashola and replaced it with his own just to score cheap political point.
The unveiling of Ambode’s version of Gani Fawehinmi’s statue is scheduled for tomorrow, Sunday April 22 to commemorate Gani’s 80th post humous birthday.
Ambode spent three years to build an unnecessary statue just to spite his predecessor.
I often queried the administrative acumen of the governor whenever i passed through Ojota and saw the removed Fashola’s version of Gani’s statue at the base of the platform which the new statue stands. Yet, we are told Ambode attended Harvard University.
What sense does it make to replace a statue of the same icon which is not damaged and which was less than five years!
Statues are built to last for decades.
It is sheer waste of scarce resources and misplacement of priorities.
Ambode’s politics of statues also got him into trouble when he decked a dandy sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo in a native Agbada with a laced safety booth to match. What an anathema!
The project was another vain and ego trip embarked by the governor.
On that same stretch of Obafemi Awolowo way, Ikeja, there is another statue of the sage apart from the one inside the Awolowo House close to Ikeja under bridge.
Worst still, Ambode has always kept a sealed lips over what the needless statues cost the tax payers.
He has repeatedly turned down Freedom of Information request to divulge the costs of the statues and other funfair ‘projects’ like Lagos at 50 celebrations and other carnivals that had arguable gulped billions.
Prior to the landmark Akure court judgement which ruled that FOI Act is applicable throughout the federation, Ambode had maintained that FOI Act was a Federal and not applicable in his own Lagos just because he wants to continue to entrench the culture of opacity in the public finance of Lagos.
If Ambode is bereft of ideas of how to immortalize icons, he should halt the shameless replication of statues all around town.
If Gani was alive, he would have rejected governor’s wasteful Greek project in solidarity with masses who are groaning under the inept leadership of Ambode.
A governor whose under his watch a city which had relatively conquered filth in the last decade slumped to become the dirtiest state in the country cannot be a friend of finicky Gani.
Gani can never hobnob with Ambode that inserted Ahpa Beta, a private firm reportedly owned by his god father Bola Tinubu into a Land Use charge law as the revenue collector that draws undisclosed humongous charges and commissions monthly.
If he was bedridden, the late chief would have requested to be wheeled along Ikeja branch members of the NBA who protested the toxic Land Use Charge increase of over 400 percent by Governor Ambode.
Is it the high cost of justice in Lagos that will excite Gani? The filling fees at Lagos courts had gone up astronomically costing over N1m to file some fundamental human rights cases.
The prohibitive cost is inhibiting access to justice and also affecting lawyers adversely.
Fiery Gani must have led a protest to Ambode in Alausa to inquire if judiciary or justice sector has become another money spinner for the government.
Gani would not have been at rest in Lagos with Ambode borehole permit fee. I trust Gani, he would have challenged in court the the affront of a government that failed to provide water for her citizens and yet tax burdened landlords who provided alternative source of water.
Ambode can never be a toast of Chief Gani Fawehinmi following the revelation of the alleged fraudulent composition of Visionscape and the billions the alleged scam cost Lagos tax payers.
Needless to talk about the eviction of Otodo Gbame people from their land among other abuses of fundamental human rights offenses committed by Ambode.
It is very clear that Ambode represents everything Gani Fawehinmi abhorred in his lifetime.
You cannot claim to love a man and detest his virtues!
The public should therefore see through the bare-faced hypocrisy and vindictiveness of Governor Akinwunmi Ambode and reject his greek gift to Gani.
Adeoba Michaels, a concerned Lagosian wrote from Lagos
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