Fashola: Electorate to blame for bad governance
Governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Fashola, has urged Nigerians to take advantage of the 2015 general elections to bring about good governance at all levels of leadership in the country.
Speaking at the recently concluded 8th Annual Conference of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA)’s Section on Business Law (SBL), Fashola said that good governance cannot be wished for, but it is a collective responsibility of the populace to install and sustain the right people in government by going to the polls.
Declaring open the conference, which was themed Exemplary Governance – Enhancing Economic Development in Nigeria, he decried the low turnout that usually blights elections, and attributed the lack of good governance in Nigeria to the electorates’ lack of interest in the polls.
“The likes of America and United Kingdom are enjoying good governance because the citizens have, over the years, used their votes to make such decisive decisions,” he observed.
“We must earn the right to good governance by turning out en masse to vote out bad leaders.”
In his address, Okey Wali (SAN), president of NBA, commended the organisers for providing a platform to discuss good governance. He urged lawyers to use their knowledge and privileges to fight bad leaders in the country.
Wali said the association had created different sections in order to give opportunities for specialization, and called on the leadership and members of sections to always participate in the programs of other sections, as this will enhance and broaden the scope of every member of the association.
Earlier in his welcome address, the chairman of Section on Business Law (SBL), Gbenga Oyebode, expressed his delight at hosting the 8th SBL conference and thanked all who contributed to the success of this conference.
The two-day conference was graced by top-ranking politicians, eminent jurists and captains of industry within and outside the country.
Which electorate is he talking about? Is it the one with less than two decades of democratic, or whose official language is not its first language, or better still with an adult illiteracy level of over 35 million people?
Until he’s able to reason with respect to the reality on ground and stop making incomparable analysis, then he too will stop being part of the problem of the “electorate”