The governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Lagos state, Jimi Agbaje, has protested the meeting arranged between the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Babajide Sanwoolu and Lagos civil servants.
Agbaje also condemned police siege at a “Free Lagos” Press Conference slated for the Lagos Airport Hotel in Ikeja last week.
“It is the mother of all ironies that on the same day that APC organised an illegal meeting for its candidate, it was sending a combined team of cops and hoodlums to dislodge an event organised by bonafide Nigerian citizens,” Agbaje noted.
Agbaje also said it is debasing that the meeting with civil servants turned rowdy because of Sanwoolu’s rice gift to the same people which he said have been subjected to sordid conditions like nepotism, over-taxation, denial of promotion, delayed promotions and deprivation of leave and end-of-year bonuses.
Speaking through his spokesman, Felix Oboagwina, he said Sanwo-olu’s gesture violated civil service decorum and neutrality.
“We find the invitation and the rice gift appalling, opportunistic and illegal. In a political contest of the nature in which Sanwo-olu and the rest of us are involved, he has been offered an undue advantage. An uneven playing field has been created. And this is condemnable and contemptible.
“The gesture goes against Nigeria’s bureaucratic statutes that forbid civil servants romancing politics. For crying out loud, there are still regulations preventing civil servants from involving in politics. That invitation and the rice gifts is a violation of those extant rules,” Agbaje said.
He posited that civil servants who maintained a neutrality and refused to show up for the meeting stood the grave danger of being marked down for discrimination, intimidation and witch-hunting.
On police and thugs aborting the event organised by the “Orange Movement for a Free Lagos State,” Agbaje said the cancellation violated the fundamental rights of the citizens to associate and hold opinions, as enshrined in the Nigerian Constitution.
Daily Trust recalls that the event ran under the theme, “Setting Lagos Free from Bourdillon Bondage, #OtogeLagos.”
“It is an assault on Freedom of Speech. And every day, we witness the frontiers of Nigerians’ freedom being eroded by a privileged minority that takes special delight in subjecting citizens to impunity and corruption,” Agbaje lamented.
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