Jonathan transforming nothing, says Fashola

Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, says President Goodluck Jonathan has done nothing to merit a second term, describing the President’s transformation agenda as a failure.

The governor, therefore, lambasted the Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria for “plotting to ensure that Jonathan returns to power through propagation of false claims.”

Fashola who was a keynote speaker at the opening ceremony of Women In Business Conference in Lagos on Monday, said he remained convinced that the country under the leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party was not transforming the country as portrayed by TAN’s numerous adverts.

The governor noted that the nation’s power supply was worsening while unemployment was on the rise. He said it was unfortunate that Nigeria, a major oil exporter, was depending on importation.

Fashola said when the price of oil stood at a $100 per barrel for almost a decade, the PDP-led Federal Government had not been able to transform the country. He therefore wondered how the same government could do better in 2015 since oil price had dropped to $80 per barrel.

He said, “Where the North East is under siege and the economy has continued to nosedive, the transformation ambassadors have continued to distort the true information that all is well. All it takes to cripple our economy by those countries from where we buy oil is to say they won’t sell to us any longer.

“We have seen a good example where the country was denied access from buying arms. This is the situation we are in as regards importation of oil. In 2010 alone, we spent N2.5trillion importing fuel into this country. Now, we have less money to import. If we can’t pay for our oil importation, we all know its implication for the country. In not too distant a future, the fuel queues will return.

“The government has yet to give us power as promised, they have yet to give us fuel, we have yet to see the standard highways they promised. There are so many Nigerians living without electricity.

“Within their transformation period, thousands of people in the North East have been killed, thousands turned refugee in their father land, over 200 girls are still in captivity of insurgents and the North East is still under siege. With all these, the transformation ambassadors are telling Nigerians that all is well.”

He noted that the Jonathan administration in 2011 promised to generate 16,000 megawatts by 2013, including harnessing coal opportunity, wind and solar to generate 13,000 megawatts electricity, noting that this had yet to become a reality.