First off, check this…
● The only viably operational seaport in Nigeria… LAGOS.
● The busiest and most operational commercial-service airport in Nigeria… LAGOS.
● The most accessible federal parastatals & offices in Nigeria… LAGOS.
● The location housing the most accessible consulates in Nigeria… LAGOS.
● The only cosmopolitan attraction in Nigeria, the number-1 metropolitan centre & the economic hub of Nigeria AS A RESULT of federal government’s glaring presence & attention… LAGOS.
Now, with the aforementioned basic statistical facts, can anyone explain how Lagos can attain sanity when, even after moving Nigeria’s federal capital from Lagos to Abuja, the federal government systemically continued to place the socioeconomic burden of Nigeria on 1 State out of 36 States of the failed contraption?
Can anyone explain how Lagos can be decongested ordinarily when, by federal government’s design for subjugation & marginalisation of other regions, “EVERYTHING” about Nigeria, speaking figuratively, can only be accessed in Lagos?
Can anyone explain why Lagosians & Lagos state government are “praying” & “expecting” Lagos to become properly habitable in a blink of an eye when the decades of insensitive, unthinking, unintelligent & outrightly useless administrations of Nigeria have refused allowing other geopolitical zones like the South-East & South-South to host some of the attractive federal investments and operational seaports & International airports?
Do they understand its socioeconomic consequences?
Have objective thinkers asked…
1. What is stopping the seaport in Calabar from being operational?
2. What is stopping the Onne wharf from being viably operational like Apapa wharf?
3. What stopped the option of Warri port all these years?
4. Why is the Ọnịcha River Port not yet considered aside the ‘2nd Niger Bridge’ deception that politicians use in bamboozling some gullible & unsuspecting Igbo people during electioneering every 4-years?
5. What is stopping the building of truly workable International airports in the South-East & South-South to reduce the concentration at Murtala Mohammed International Airport Lagos?
6. Why would an importer in Ọnịcha, Aba or Nnewi have to go all the way to Apapa Wharf for his goods when Calabar or Onne Wharf is at his backyard?
7. Why would the Igbo, the Ijaw, the Ibibio/Efik have to go all the way to Abuja or Lagos before they can board major International flights?
8. Would any graduate or young entrepreneur from the South East or South South relocate to Lagos if he/she has another “Lagos” in his/her own geopolitical zone?
In a bid to marginalise & subjugate the South-East & South-South regions especially, Nigerian government ended up making Lagos the number-1 hell-hole of Nigeria.
TRUTH IS…
(A) No elitist policies or measures whatsoever by the Lagos State government can change Lagos.
(B) The insensitivity and outright impoverishment of the Lagos citizenry and destruction of their viable means of livelihood & survival will NOT chase anyone away from Lagos, and won’t stop Lagos from still being the TRASHOPOLITAN HUB of Nigeria until the federal government embarks on “the needful” of decongesting Lagos by reducing the national burden it has put on the shoulders of that SINKING Lagos.
(C) Thousands of people from other zones in Nigeria won’t cease relocating to Lagos EVERYDAY and NOBODY can stop them. Even Chadians, Nigeriennes & migrating Fulanis from Sub-Saharan Africa now have a stake in Lagos. All “thanks” to the federal government of the failed Nigerian enterprise.
Bottomline..
ONLY the federal government of Nigeria can decongest Lagos. If not, Lagos will keep getting worse and NO Lagos State’s constricted policy or stringent law can redeem the HELLISH Lagos.
Blame the federal government of Nigeria for the woes of Lagos.
Tony Kanu
