Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola
Raji Fashola’s government in Lagos produces college illiterates like
sausages; and now clips at the heels of neighbouring Oyo state -
adjudged the second most illiterate in Nigeria.
Three years ago, the United Nations assessed the continuing 80-90%
school failure rates in Nigeria’s 36 states as meaning that Nigeria is
the 9th most illiterate country in the world. A later World Bank Survey
of 2011 declared Lagos state as worse and degraded than in the 1970s.
Over against these facts, Raji Fasjola and Bola Tinubu’s joint
government declares Lagos state the praline place of excellence, and
their Action Congress (AC), a progressive political party.
But the duo’s dissent bears no dis-proving facts of Lagos’ dolorous narrative.
As it is, Lagos’ medium term future is in doubt, not least because
its future taxes cannot be raised from the millions of illiterate and
un-skilled youths who will rather likely press violently for free social
services to further tie up the State’s finances already hobbled by over
$500 million debts.
Overlaying all of this is Bola Tinubu’s absolute personal control of Lagos state government.
For never in history has any Parliament adjourned its official
proceedings and marched to the private residence of a politician not
holding public office to pledge the Parliament’s un-conditional
allegiance to that politician. But that’s exactly what happened in June
2007 – immediately after the Lagos State Assembly was inaugurated by the
new Governor; Raji Fashola - when 99% of the State Parliamentarians
rushed to Bola Tinubu’s private residence to pledge the Lagos’
Parliament’s allegiance to Bola Tinubu in his then private capacity,
with the incumbent Governor Raji Fashola merely looking on, having been
pawned to remain in hock.
Till now, Bola Tinubu’s private ownership of Lagos State government
continues without as much as a whimper by any wing of Nigeria’s Civil
Rights Movements. “Civil Rights Groups in Nigeria have no intellectual
direction”, said Global Witness; a highly respected anti-fraud
organisation based in America.
In truth, not all Lagosians have been sitting on their hands. One
candidate at the 2011 Governorship elections; Mr. J.K Randle; an
experienced accountant, had groaned on national teevee during a debate
with Bola Tinubu’s hand-picked successor – Raji Fashola - that he
(Randle) has never been able to make sense of Lagos State finances and
he’s been asking for the account details but was continuously denied it.
Step back and spare a thought for Mr. Randle who was by then at the end of his tethers.
Beginning 1999, Lagos State government has yearly announced and
published its budget at much fanfared events, but a budget is a mere
proposal - not an accounting statement, and so, Mr. Randle’s jeremiad is
right that there’s no publicly known account of Lagos State - for as
long as Lagos State refuses to publish its post-budget expenditure and
income.
To close that gaping hole for continuing financial fraud in Lagos, a
group known as Citizens Assistance Centre sued on October 25, 2011 for
an order of mandamus – in terms asking the Ikeja High Court to compel
that Lagos State Assembly discloses the State’s post-budget expenditure.
But the High Court Judge assigned the case ( Yetunde Idowu) struck
it out on 14th March, 2012, on a tenuous ground that the case should
have been filed within thirty days from “when the Lagos Assembly ignored
the group’s letter dated July 14, 2011, asking for details of
accounts”. Whereas, Judge Yetunde Idowu herself made no finding of the
exact date that the ignoring of the petition dated 14th March ceased or
stopped - being a continuing fact – to enable her court feasibly apply
the short statute of limitation to reckon the thirty (30) days required
to bring a lawsuit.
Nigerian court judgments, of course, typically follow this pattern of begging the question.
Regardless of that squelching court order, Lagos state finances
continue to nag curious Lagos residents, especially after a federal
Senate investigation in 2011 returned a verdict of Lagos’ indebtedness
of $460 million – equivalent to half as much again of the state’s yearly
financial revenue, excluding other gross liabilities on the back of the
over-expansion of the size of Lagos government with huge future
consequences on the state’s pension bills.
Taking a cue, and sensing a cover-up, a Lagos resident (Dr. Ademola
Dominic) petitioned the Lagos State government directly on the 24th of
October 2012, asking for a disclosure of public accounts as pertain the
tax consultancy fee the Lagos State government pays out monthly to a
private company named Alpha Beta Consulting Limited.
Dr. Dominic, as Petitor, invoked the Freedom of Information Act and demanded as follows:-
· “I wish to know how the taxes, revenue, finances of the
State accrue, are managed, and disbursed in Lagos State and do hereby
apply, to you, by yourselves, agents, servants etc. to access and
request to be made available to me by you, all information, CTC’s of
Files, records, Contract Agreements/Documents, in respect of the said
Contract/Agreement entered into between the Government of Lagos State
and, the Company, Alpha Beta Consulting Limited, mandating the Company
to assess and collect on behalf of the Government all Taxes and
Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) due, payable and paid by the
Government and its agencies and all the commissions due, payable and
paid by the government to the Company and received by the Company since
the announcement of the Contract/Agreement for my perusal and scrutiny
pursuant to Section 2, 3(3)m, o, 5, 6, 7, 9, & 10 of the Provisions
of the Freedom of Information Act 2011 (F.O.I) as
Replicated/Domesticated in Lagos State of Nigeria. My request is
basically to let me know the monthly returns of the taxes and Internally
Generated Revenue (IGR) generated, accrued, collected and paid to the
Government and commissions received from Government or its agencies by
the Company since inception of the contract”.
According to Dr. Dominic’s petition for account, “the Government of
Lagos State boasts of internally generated revenue of about N40 billion
every month; translating into a commission of N6 Billion being paid to
Alpha Beta Consulting Ltd, also every month, which sum i consider
unfavourable and outrageous to me as a tax payer and Citizen of Lagos
State”.
In public eyes, the offending company - Alpha Beta (Consulting)
Limited – is putatively owned by Alhaji Bola Tinubu - the past Lagos
Governor – who’d handpicked Raji Fashola in 2007 as the Action Congress
governorship candidate in Lagos by riding roughshod over the party’s
constitution's requirement for a sensible primary election.
In his proxy reply to Dr. Dominic, dated November 5th, 2012, Raji
Fashola treated Dr. Dominic’s petition as the occasion to return the
personal compliments for his sly preferment by Bola Tinubu.
Here is how. In a reply cutting close to the bone, the Lagos State
government tersely told Dr. Dominic that his petition for accounts would
not be answered and no Alpha Beta Limited invoices or payment vouchers
will be disclosed. It was so dismissively written by the Lagos State
Ministry of Justice and signed by Olanrewaju Akinsola - a Special Senior
Assistant on Justice Sector Reforms in the Office of the
Attorney-General.
In terms, that November 5th reply letter conveyed Lagos State’s
stance to treat Lagos finances as personal funds rather than as
usufructuary asset that it is.
To back its refusal, Raji Fashola’s government declared in its reply
letter to Dr. Dominic’s petition that Nigeria’s Freedom of Information
Act does not apply to Raji Fashola’s government in Lagos because the
right to public information is a law made by the National Assembly in
Abuja, without any effect in Lagos State, since the Lagos House of
Assembly did not enact it.
Shorn of all intellectual pretence to “true federalism” that Raji
Fashola queerly but defensively invoked, the long and the short of it is
that Lagos State residents are pointed told they have no right to know
the revenue and expenditure accounts of their government under Raji
Fashola’s government.
In effect, and for the first time in Nigerian history, an elected
government declares non-accountability as its governing principle by
readying to brazen out the direr consequences.
Now, however it is cut or diced, the gauntlet of true federalism Raji
Fashola thereby threw down is pretensive nonsense, for the most part,
and, in the specific context of Dr. Dominic’s civic request for
accountability from an elected government; a no-brainer.
By commonsense alone, anyone who’s contributed financially as a
member of a co-operative society or social club knows that the right to
collect levies or taxes from the people carries with it the correlative
duty to subsequently render accounts to the people levied or taxed.
With or without any law, the duty to render account to a levied or
taxed person exists in ethics as a compelling habit of honesty and
continues as a legitimate expectation in all civilized human relations.
Raji Fashola does not need any law to do the needful by routinely
issuing public records of Lagos state revenue and expenditure without
waiting to be asked. For that is the heart of the social contract
between the government and the governed. To now require to be forced to
do this ordinary duty, sounding in ethics, reflects badly on Raji
Fashola’s governing reputation by figuring it out as lacking an abiding
sense of responsibility.
For if Raji Fashola were otherwise not in hock; or un-prepossessed
without skeletons to hide, he would grasp the fact at once that the
Speaker of the Lagos Assembly, Adeyemi Ikuforiji, had early on tested
this same “true federalism theory” - which is now badly twisted to
leach it of its originally good meaning by the current Action Congress
(ACN) party apparatchiks to trench close to meaning non-accountability.
When the Lagos Speaker, Adeyemi Ikuforiji raised his own true
federalism theory as a preliminary objection in the High court; in
questioning the jurisdiction of a federal court over his self-declared
official capacity act of (alleged) money-laundering of ₦530 million at
state level, the Federal High Court promptly dismissed the true
federalism theory as nonsense, mirroring the scuppering fate awaiting
Raji Fashola’s resurrected version of this same bogus defense.
……………..Seyi Olu Awofeso is a Legal Practitioner
Saharareporters
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