ON BUHARI AND THE LAGOS METRO-LINE PROJECT-SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT (1) Jonathans supporters have been agog recently that Buhari cancelled the N700 million Lagos rail mass transit programme initiated in 1983 by the Action Governor Alhaji Lateef Jakande, with a serving PDP Minister, Mrs Jumoke Akinjide overreaching her self with outright lies that her father, then Minister of Justice under the toppled Shagari (NPN) regime had perfected the legal papers for the project to get off the ground. For smear effect they are positing that even the present traffic situation in Lagos should be blamed on Buhari. I had earlier promised to set the record straight. It is one thing to play politics, but you cannot suppress facts. And as my people say lies hardly bear fruits. SHAGARI GOVERNMENT SABOTAGED THE LAGOS METRO LINE PROJECT AND NOT BUHARI It is true that Alhaji Lateef Jakande, the Action Governor of Lagos State initiated the metro-line project and awarded the contract to a French firm at the cost of N700 million with a completion period of 2 years. However, as Alhaji Lateef himself explained President Shagari stopped the CBN from releasing the first tranche of the money for the project amounting to N70 million. Indeed, Alhaji Lateef was compelled to ask his commissioner of works what was responsible for the delay in releasing the mobilization funds to the construction company. The commissioner investigated and discovered that it was President Shagari who asked the Central Bank of Nigeria not to release the money. Now hear from the horses mouth: I was told President Shagari was angry because I did not congratulate him after his controversial election [in 1983] and because I won election on the platform of an opposition party [UPN]. I later approached him and explained the problem facing execution of the project and that CBN refused N70 million reserved for its take-off. President Shagari said it was because there was fuel crisis. He said the CBN governor would visit him that evening and that he would get back to me after talking to him on the metro-line project fund. I quickly replied that I would wait for him since I considered him paramount to undo the knots on the release of the fund, The CBN governor finally arrived, and President Shagari raised the issue of N70 million metro-line project fund. But the CBN governor said the fund cannot be released at once. He asked me to withdraw as many times as possible citing the reasons of bad economy and increasing fuel crisis at the period. Bottom line: By the time the Buhari regime came on board in 1983/84, the Lagos metro line project has not taken off, it was effectively sabotaged by the Shagari government (in which Mrs. Akinjides father was Minister of Justice), because of pettiness. In the second installment, I will explain how the economic/debt crisis at the time forced Buhari regime not to approve the loan that was taken to back the project and why successive governments could not resurrect the project under the subsisting financing arrangements, until the coming of Tinubu and later Fashola.
Posted on: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 13:22:33 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015