The phased relocation of key parastatals and agencies of government back to Lagos and the sudden threat of multinationals and embassies to follow suit has raised national consciousness and dominated national discussion of late. The question on everyone’s lips is whether the unfolding event is premeditated or peripheral.
Several views have been canvassed but the fact that history is replete with such events one will have dismissed it with a wave of the hand as a mirage of skeptics antithetical to realism.
However, the planned relocation is like an Impala that is in a hurry to outjump everyone in a bid to escape the bullet of the hunter but eventually landing on the claws of a lion. It is never an accident of history rather it has been copiously calculated as a deliberate means to return Lagos to its status quo ante. As the former federal capital territory Lagos had missed the attention of the federal government in terms of funding and infrastructure. Being the former seat of power it had enjoyed privileges that hitherto only accrues to Abuja and a Lagosian President will yearn for a return to the old order.
The first signal that something was in the offing was when Lagos State convinced Buhari that the state House in Marina was borrowed from Lagos State by the Federal government and must be returned to it. It is difficult to comprehend how and why Buhari fell for such chicanery but the intervention of Asiwaju did the magic and State House Marina is now back as Lagos property.
Since that issue is no longer in contention and with such edifice recovered, the plot now was to regain full control of Dodan Barracks and remodel it as the de facto seat of government. While preparing the 2023 supplementary budget the Vice president’s official residence in Ikoyi also received an allocation of billions of naira in tandem with the hatched docket.
Then began the phased movement of departments and Agencies of government in fulfillment of such an audacious plan.
Similarly, the act is accompanied by flimsy excuses that never existed before the actualization of these subterranean maneuvers. As the plot thickens President Tinubu maintains sealed lips masquerading as though it was a routine exercise being carried out by the Ministries, Departments, and Agencies of Government. Our Constitution recognizes the Federal Capital Territory as the seat of power and no country operates a dual capital city.
Perhaps the President’s penchant for constitutional breaches has now been brought to the fore. His encounter with Ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo over his conversation of the 57 development areas to local government councils and the withholding of the statutory allocation of Lagos State for such breaches is now a sad reminder starkly staring us in the face. Obj had insisted that only 20 local governments were recognized by the Constitution and any addition is in the breach.
More vexatious is the sudden collapse of security in the Fct which had heralded new menaces of relocation and removal of multinational businesses and embassies back to Lagos. The wave of kidnappings has assumed a more horrible and dangerous dimension such that people are now being picked like chickens in their respective homes. Upon nonpayment of specified ransomes victims are returned in body bags. This is horrific as it is vicious.
President Tinubu must heed subtly but poignantly to such calls for the retention of those departments and Agencies of government scheduled to be moved to Lagos in the Federal capital territory. Such a move if executed is against the spirit and collective interest of the Nigerian people as enunciated by the Nigerian constitution.
By Umar Sani
Alhaji Umar Sani writes from Kaduna, he can be reached at umarsanidcat@gmail.com
