A new narrative is loading in Nigeria’s gubernatorial election story-line as Lagos State Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, will enter the nation’s election history books as the first seating governor to lose primary election for second term bid.
Otherwise, as His Excellency, Akinwunmi Ambode, is quietly licking his wounds, so many people are popping champagne, celebrating his loss at the just-concluded All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship primary.
Opinion poll in the last one week of the governorship primaries across the states and Lagos in particular showed groups of people in terms of gainers and losers.
The gainers
1. Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, minister of works and housing; Ambode wasn’t his preference to succeed him. When Ambode eventually became governor, he dealt with Fashola, who was said to have sacked him from the civil service ab-initio.
2. Politicians in the State who were shut out from the come-and-chop table of government.
3. Civil servants who were retired from service by Ambode. This set includes Fashola’s people who were shoved out of service.
4. Vehicle Inspection Officers (VIOs) who were accused of specialising in extorting the public in the name of checking vehicles’ road worthiness. Ambode sent them packing.
5. LASTMA, the Lagos Transport Management Authority which comprises of mostly thugs in uniform. Those ones specialise in harassing motorists in the name of enforcing traffic rules, while, in fact, they’re extort motorists and avoid the real traffic offenders: danfo, Keke and okada riders.
6. LAWMA, the Lagos Waste Management Authority. Under Fashola, they did a wonderful job in keeping Lagos clean. But Ambode disbanded them and brought a Dubai based environmental services company, Visionscape, who could not understand that wastes generated in Lagos are far different from what they manage in UAE. Accordingly, the result is that Lagos is today very filthy.
7. Commissioners and other aides. Under Ambode, this set of people lost influence. Ambode was a one-man Mr. Know it all. They didn’t see pepper to chop as before.
8. Some traditional rulers who openly complained that Ambode wasn’t picking their calls nor allowing them see small pepper to chop.
9. Lagosians who are living with the numerous potholes that decorate Lagos roads. Lagosians who are greeted daily by stench from the mountain of refuse that had somehow become a permanent feature of road medians and street corners.
The losers
1. Many who envy his good works: Jubilee Bridge, Abule Egba bridge, the demolition of the numerous roundabout clogging traffic on the Lekki Peninsula corridor, those who envy some of us who travel home through the beautiful Epe-Ijebu Ode expressway freshly minted by Ambode.
2. Those who want the road leading to the decayed infrastructure called Muritala Mohammed International Airport, Ikeja, to remain an eyesore. Ambode is working on it currently and I hope he’s around to complete it.
3. The Jagaban, Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, Ambode’s godfather who thought him some lessons in politics and politicking. He reaffirmed himself as the sole kingmaker of Lagos, a master strategist and a political Juggernaut of sorts.
4. The Government House Chaplin whom Ambode threw out of his church residence for not giving a special anointing to his wife.
5. Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, outgoing Governor of Osun State and leader of APC in Alimosho who said Ambode kept him waiting for 6 hours and was dismantling his Alimosho stronghold.
