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Following silence over the placement of Lagos State on a special status with special allocation two years after elections, indications have emerged that the state may have lost confidence on the campaign promise of assigning special status and allocation to the state.

It would be recalled that during the last lap of presidential campaign at the Taslim Balogun Stadium, President Muhammadu Buhari promised the state that on delivery of the state to APC, government will assign special status to the state with reasonable financial backup to take care of several abandoned federal assets.

First signal that the promise may have hit the rock was observed at the Senate when a bill sponsored by Senator Oluremi Tinubu to give the state a special status constitutionally failed.

But barely two months of the failure, elder Statesman and former Federal Commissioner for Works and Housing, Alhaji Femi Okunnu expressed sadness over the current status of the Federal Secretariat in Lagos and other abandoned and surplus assets of the Federal Government in the State, urging that the assets be returned to the State Government for effective and proper usage.

However, followers of issues concerning either special status to Lagos say if the apex government does that, agitations are likely to erupt in both Enugu in South East and Calabar in South South where the federal government had had one or two abandoned assets as former federal capitals even before heading to Lagos and finally Abuja. It was not clear if it was this line of fears that has caused the federal government to keep Lagos in abeyance for two year.

Okunnu spoke at Lagos House in Ikeja while presenting the report of a Special Committee which he chaired set up by Governor Akinwunmi Ambode on Federal Government Assets in the State.

According to him, the whole of Ikoyi, Banana Island, Osborne Foreshore, Festac Town, Satellite Town, Trade Fair, among others belonged to Lagos State Government, and title of the lands were vested in the Governor of the State, urging the Federal Government to handover the assets to the State Government.

He specially decried the state of the Federal Secretariat in Ikoyi, saying the case was particularly saddening as it was during his tenure as Federal Commissioner for Works that the structure was constructed.

Okunnu averred that “Federal Secretariat gives me sadness because I built it when I was the Federal Commissioner for Works. The land upon which the secretariat is situated is part of the Crown land now State land. The title is vested in Lagos State but when he was Governor of Lagos State, Brigadier General Omobola Johnson (Rtd) agreed to release that land to Federal Government when they wanted to build Federal Secretariat.

“Today, I don’t like to pass through that side because it gives me sadness anytime I see it in the current state.

“It is not only the quarters but the land on which many of these buildings in the areas are situate. In our Committee, We have tried to argue that the whole of Ikoyi with the boundary at Lagos Canal standing between Ikoyi Island and Lagos Island, title to the whole of the Island is vested in the government of Lagos State when Lagos became Crown Colony. The whole of Ikoyi including Osborn Foreshore, Banana Island, and others belong to the State Government,” Okunnu said.

He argued further that the title to the whole of Festac Town was vested in the Government of Lagos State and that the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) remained the tenant of the State Government, same as Trade Fair.

“Lagos State Government acquired the Land of the Trade Fair site but Federal Government took over the land and gave a promise to pay the state compensation which was to be paid to the original owners of the land but that compensation was not paid. Today, the Trade Fair has been turned into market far from the original purpose intended.

“Satellite Town too is vested in Lagos State. It is the Federal Government which should prove title to any land which it claims to own in Lagos State, but I will like to urge the Federal Government to return the lands to the State Government,” Okunnu said.

In his response after receiving the report, Governor Akinwumni Ambode commended members of the Committee and said the State Government was in dire need of space for developmental projects that would improve the socio-economic wellbeing of its residents in line with the realities of present times.

“It is our hope that this initiative will put an end to the long-standing dispute between Federal and Lagos State Governments over the Federal Government disused lands and buildings and disputed quarters in various parts of the State which are no longer in use for the purposes for which they were originally released to the Federal Government,” Ambode noted.