TheCable

There must be something congenitally wrong with some Nigerians that when a former public officer accused of frivolous spending responded with a mere statement, and voila, he is absolved of the charge. More shameful is the action of simpletons in our newsrooms who cast such lame headlines attributing denials as ‘refutals’ pretending not to know that without concrete evidence, nobody is absolved of such serious allegation. Further, a court of competent jurisdiction must adjudicate on such matters before anyone could be declared free. Similarly, as a judicial maxim goes, ‘he who alleges must prove’.

This preface is necessary because of the allegation against former Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola over a website which his administration spent a princely sum of N78.3 million on. It was an upgrade and incredulously, it bears Mr. Fashola’s name and one wonders whether our governor, a senior advocate, does not understand the implication of asking the government he superintended to pay for a personal website. By the way, my interest in this matter is solely as a tax-paying citizen of the state Fashola governed for eight years.

His predecessor in office, Bola Tinubu, features in this saga because of the insinuation that he is the one instigating some organisations to petition the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) or whatever remains of it, to probe Fashola. With well-oiled information machinery, the governor-emeritus, as he is known in government circles in the state, is eminently qualified to defend himself and hold his ground in a political chess game. The article ‘the’ in the headline refers to Fashola’s press release, which he prefaced with a quote, “When you wrestled with a pig, the pigs get happy and you get dirty.” The statement offered no attribution for this quote but a cursory analysis would reveal the often-condescending tone of Fashola’s responses whenever he is asked to defend some of his controversial actions in office. Remember the ‘our houses are not for people’ response when he was asked about the high cost of the HOMS project of his government?

In case you missed it, those asking Fashola to account for his stewardship as it concerned a website which the contracting firm claimed it quoted N12.5 million for the upgrade of the website www.fashola.com but received N10 million were the ones our former governor referred to as pigs simply because they demand an account of their commonwealth. As a friend wryly observed upon reading Fashola’s statement, probably the website offered direct access to God and that is why it cost as high as N78 million. He admitted that N12 million was actually awarded for the site upgrade while other services such as “the handover countdown clock, mobile apps for Google, for iOS ipad, for Microsoft, and Blackberry and the annual maintenance cost for managing the site make up the total of N78 million.”

True, the statement added, “the Lagos State procurement agency gave a no-objection based on the advice of the Ministry of Science and Technology, who are the government adviser on ICT matters.” That must be the lawyer in Fashola speaking that in a way the expenditure was perfectly legal but I wonder if the former governor was still in chambers and a junior associate filed this as statement of defence for a client, he would not fling it back at the junior. The company that executed contract claimed it received N10 million leaving a balance of N2 million since the statement admitted that N12 million was the contract sum, what happened to the balance?

For those interpreting the call for EFCC investigation as the froth of party politics, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has denied responsibility for instigating the wahala just as it is incredulous that Tinubu would be the brain behind it ostensibly to prevent Fashola from being nominated to President Muhammadu Buhari’s cabinet. An organisation, budgiT, first broke the story, if it can be called that, when it posted some contracts awarded by the Lagos State government under Fashola. On its website, it describes itself as “a creative start-up driven to retell the Nigerian budget and public data in a finer detail across every literacy span. We aim to stimulate citizens interests around public data and hence trigger discussion towards better governance.”

I think we must join the budgiT crusade and expose the cover over every shady deal across all levels of government in our country. Whenever questions are asked of Fashola’s stewardship in the state, one is always confronted with the mantra of ‘at least he tried’ forgetting the other critical aspect of ‘at what cost?’ especially considering the funds available to his government. Further, the petition to EFCC by the two organisations asking for investigation was not just on the website issue alone, there are other issues as well and Lagos residents would do well to avail themselves of the petition before commenting. No one has pronounced Fashola guilty, but the poster boy of APC is not above questioning and he should not shy away from explaining his actions while in office.