*As Lagos4Lagos consolidates on efforts
By KEMI KASUMU
The Lagos4Lagos Movement, which just proceeded from the All Progressives Congress (APC) to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) last Friday 21 January, 2022, looks and sounds more seriously than thought as it is positioned and prepared with vigour and vitality to win the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) in Lagos State come 2023, it has been said.
Speaking on Arise Television programme monitored by The DEFENDER in Lagos Tuesday morning, Lead Convener of the Lagos4Lagos Movement and Governorship Aspirant in Lagos State, Dr. AbdulAzeez Olajide Adediran, also known as Jandor, explained how he would leverage on the numerical strength of the movement, working with existing structure in the PDP, to dislodge the status quo and enthrone a new governing system in the Centre of Excellence.
Asked how he wants to be able to dislodge an APC from Lagos, which not even – as party in power at the centre – his new party, the PDP, was able to do for as long as the Fourth Republic lasted till the end of its 16 years in office, Adediran confidently told his interviewers where the difference lies.
In the discussion tagged, “Can Lagos4Lagos surplant APC, Tinubu?”, he cited how similar implosion, which occurred within the PDP to hand Federal power to APC in 2015, which, according to him, has already occured within the Lagos APC, will make the path to Alausa easier for the PDP, whose governorship ticket he currently seeks.
Jandor’s responses in details, “First of all let me speak to the numbers. What we had in TBS was over 40,000 of our members straight from APC and in our data base, we are over a hundred thousand. I mean we were only able to bring 40,000 due to logistics issues to TBS. We’ve gotten these numbers and it’s not just like we are making… you’ve seen several things that we have done. Even while we were in the APC, we were having parallel congress. Parallel means they are having their own and we are having our own, simultaneously.
“They got all the money, our common patrimony and they paid people to come there and our own people used their own money and they came to the venue. You saw the difference between crowds. So, we got the numbers.
“Number two, how are we able to do it? I will take you back to 2015 when the APC got the centre. A lot of us would sit down and say, “Oh! It was Tinubu, it was Buhari”. How many times did Buhari try that he didn’t make it and how many times did Tinubu try and he never produced a President?
“It was the implosion that occurred within the PDP at that time that informed the APC getting the centre. If you remember there was a time we lost Kwankwaso in Kano and if you take Kano for m North West, what is left? The Seat of Caliphate, Sokoto, Wammako left. In Rivers, Rotimi Amaechi left. When you take Rivers from the South South what is left? Then in Kwara Saraki left as sitting governor. If you take Kwara out of North Central, what is left? Atiku left. It was that implosion within the PDP that informed the APC being able to get the centre. In other words, it was the same PDP that won that election for APC.
“So let’s take this back to Lagos, that’s why I said over the years PDP has tried, they’ve one or two things. But until we have that implosion in the strong base of status quo, we can’t get anything done. This is what has happened on Friday.
“I will tell you this, we have huge numbers of APC stalwarts but they can’t come out for obvious reasons. But we have them. They are silent supporters. They are invisible and they will do a whole lot in wrecking havoc from within to get there. We can’t know them. They are there. And this is something that we have that will make the difference.
“So, we’ve been able to take all the foot soldiers off them. So they are all by themselves. If they want to send anybody message, let them go and bring their own children. We have left. We are now in PDP.
“In 2023, do you know what they are doing now? They are trying everything possible to make sure that we don’t get on the ballot because, they know that it’s not just for us getting on the ballot, it will not just be PDP on the ballot but APC versus….
“A lot of people are saying l, “Okay, can we do something else?” This is something we have witnessed over the years, our consistency is there to speak for us. We’ve done all sorts of things, we’ve expressed our seriousness and readiness to take this thing back. We are tired of you coming to pick somebody who never prepared to govern, who never envisioned to govern, who never even knew Lagos.
“There is no ward, there is no local government that I haven’t been to in the last six years. As I sit here, I can tell you all the traffic points in Lagos, these are the problems in those places and how to solve them. It’s not rocket science.
“Or we have issues of theft in traffick all the times. If you are going to Ojota they will tell you, “Somebody broke the glass of car in Ojota and picked someone’s bag and so on. There is solution to all these and I will tell you one.
“This state government is the one giving all these garages to all these agberos to say, “Okay you are the one in charge of this garage” and they are making quite a lot of money from it. Who betides you as a sitting governor of Lagos State, if anything happens in that corridor I will the garage away from you. Those guys will do everything to secure the whole of that corridor during traffic hours. You don’t need the police to do all of these things.
“In my area, I was born in Mushin, you can’t come from anywhere and you want to come and steal. You can’t even come,” he said.
