By Steve Omolale– For quite sometime now, Mr. Steve Osuji, a disgruntled and thoroughly discredited journalist who was, in July, this year, slammed with a year suspension for professional misconduct by the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE), has been dancing naked in public, in his usual character.
The shameless and morally bankrupt Osuji who has lost all the right to guage anybody on a moral scale since he betrayed his colleagues, has been using his column on social media platforms, ‘Expresso Umbbrage’ to pour invectives on Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu and his administration in Lagos State. Osuji has embarked on disingenuous criticisms, spewing falsehood to mislead Lagosians in particular and Nigerians in general into believing that Sanwo-Olu has done almost nothing as a governor for the past six years. He has been using all kinds of demeaning adjectives to describe the governor and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu who endorsed the former to govern the Centre of Excellence. The same Tinubu he was insulting had provided a means of livelihood for him and his family when he worked as a member of Editorial Board of The Nation newspapers in Lagos.
All Osuji’s write-ups about Lagos State reek of deep-seated bitterness, unjustifiable hatred and uncontrolled resentment, just the way he never sees anything good in his home state of Imo where the state government has marked him as its enemy one. They lack the objectivity expected of every journalist. His articles about Sanwo-Olu are deliberately mischievously presented for the public to see him as a lame duck who just wakes up in the morning, rides to his office at Alausa, sits down all day doing nothing and goes back home in the evening. What a shallow way of thinking!
The latest of Osuji’s vituperation, served some gullible members of the public, was contained in his column on social media with the headline: “Ikoyi Cemetery: Yet another metaphor for abysmal Lagos.” While he first used Ikoyi Cemetery to mask his real intention in the article, he soon revealed it by pouring venom on the state government, in his psychopathic characteristic manner, for the unkempt cemetery. Haba! When did it become the responsibility of the state government to keep and maintain a cemetery? Every reasonable Nigerian knows that opening and maintaining a cemetery anywhere in the country is the sole responsibility of the local councils.
In his hallucination, Osuji wrote in the column: “Not only are the grassroots governments denied revenue streams, but federal government direct allocations are just not allowed to trickle to the last mile.” He probably was in deep slumber when the government of Lagos State insisted that it should not have been joined in the suit in which the Supreme Court ordered the Federal Government to send councils’ monthly allocations directly to their accounts because Lagos under Sanwo-Olu has never denied the councils their allocations.
And like a drenched drunk who just staggered out of a beer parlour, he further wrote: “Since 2019, the current Lagos state government seems to have lapsed into a state of suspended animation. Hardly anything major has happened.
“Apart from completing Lagos light rail project which had been on for decades, and the ongoing Lekki-Epe Expressway, no other remarkable work can be recorded to Governor Babajide Sanwoolu’s name…
“But history shall record the Sanwoolu era as eight years of vacuous emptiness.” Really?
Worried by this barrage of endless and senseless criticisms, and as a journalist and a concerned Lagos resident, I had to take the pains to confirm, under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, from relevant government agencies, if all what this character wrote was actually true, despite the fact that many of the government projects are quite visible to discerning Lagosians. And I can unequivocally confirm that the harsh criticisms were products of his wild imagination laced with bitterness and bigotry.
Only a character with brainwaves, as Osuji has consistently demonstrated, would say he was able to see just the light rail and the Lagos-Epe Expressway as the only projects executed by Sanwo-Olu in the last six years!
For, if the governor had not done anything during his first term, as Osuji wanted people to believe, he would not have got the massive votes of Lagosians for his second term the way he did in the 2023 general election where he polled a total of 726,134 votes to beat his closest rival, Labour Party’s Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivor, who scored 312,329 votes.
Sensible Lagosians who have been positively touched by the governor’s impressive performance in the last six years will attest to the fact that he has done well, the reason he was rewarded with a second term.
To permanently cure Steve Osuji’s cognitive dissonance, that is if he would submit himself for psychological assessment and counselling, facts and figures of such performances across all the sectors of the economy are available, only if he had dropped his laziness as an embittered writer that he is and sought them.
Asking in the trash he wrote: “How many new schools, hospitals, housing estates, and even new roads have been built by Sanwoolu?” is the highest display of illitracy and imbecility.
For Osuji’s information and education, the Sanwo-Olu administration has done well in education by establishing nine new schools across the state so far with a combined population of 4,588 pupils, comprising 2,310 girls and 2,278 boys. The school buildings, which are to complement the existing ones, are enviable architectural masterpieces. It also hired over 2,000 teachers, renovated and rehabilitated several schools across the state, distributed 18,912 mobile devices to SS2 students across the six education districts, paid the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) fees of all public school students and added two more new universities to the only existing one six years ago, among several achievements, which could not be listed for space constraints.
In the health scetor where Osuji says he did not see any achievement, the administration has recruited 2,200 health professionals so far, embarked on massive rehabilitation and renovation of many health facilities across the Centre of Excellence, such as the Ebute-Metta, Harvey Road and Ketu-Ejinrin health centres, as well as Somolu, Isolo and other general hospitals in the state. Besides, while four Mother and Child Centres (MCCs) have been inaugurated in Epe, Ajah, Badagry and Igando, 1,417 residents have benefitted from all kinds of free surgeries across the state. It should also be noted that if the administration had not brilliantly handled and managed the last Covid-19 crisis, the pandemic would have wiped out millions of Lagosians. And to make its preparedness for such an epidemic permanent, it now has an oxygen plant in Yaba. These are just a few of the numerous feats in the health sector.
Steve Osuji should also drop his laziness garb, which he shamelessly but proudly wears and take a trip round Lagos to see that the Sanwo-Olu administration completed over 300 road projects during his first tenure on Victoria Island, in Kosofe, Somolu, Ikoyi, Ojokoro and other parts of the state. It has also completed 61 roads and five bridges since its second term began. It is currently working on several others to spread development across all the nooks and crannies of the state.
Furthermore, it completed work on the 1.4 kilometres flyover at Agege Pen Cinema, a project inherited from the Akinwumi Ambode administration, among others. While several jetties have been completed, others are in various stages of completion. The administration created over 18,000 jobs through the Lagos Bus Service Limited (LBSL) and increased its fleet to 335, despite the burning of several of the buses by criminal elements during the EndSARS riots. Same applied to rail transportation, which has been completely renewed and revolutionised like never before.
Since Osuji says he is not aware of any new housing estate built by Sanwo-Olu in the last six years, he should pay a visit to Amuwo-Odofin where two LBIC Housing Estates have been completed, Sangotedo Phase One where 774 units LagosHOMS are standing, Ikate, Lekki with 100 housing units, the 492 home units at Lateef Jakande Housing Estate, Igando, the new housing units in Ogba, Agbowa, Lekki Phase Two, Surulere, Ikorodu, Agege, Victoria Island and several other parts of Lagos. In all, there are 24 beautiful housing estates with a total of about 11,000 units built by the administration in the last six years.
It has also made food security a topmost priority with the Lagos Rice Mill, Imota, where operation has since started; with the establishment of a semi-mechanised abattoir in Oko-Oba, Agege; with the empowerment of 879 farmers and Small and Medium-scale Entrepreneurs (SMEs); with support for 20 clusters of Ofada rice farmers and with the provision of tractors and implements to farmers to boost cultivation and produce harvesting.
The administration’s midas touch has been felt in environmental regeneration, welfare of public servants, technology, entertainment, administration of justice, youth employment and development, sports and security under which the government donated many patrol vehicles and provides special allowances for security agents monthly, the reason Lagos residents, including doubting Thomases and bitter souls like Steve Osuji, can sleep with their two eyes closed.
If Lagos is as bad as Osuji painted it, why is he living and raising his family here? Why has he not gone back to his home state in the Southeast and sit at home every Monday? What does he do for a living other than being paid by his fellow clowns to keep posting rubbish, particularly about Lagos and his home state, because they refused to dance to his tune?
For a comprehensive list of all the programmes and projects of the Sanwo-Olu administration in the last six years, Steve Osuji should eat the humble pie, visit the Alausa Secretariat like I did and like any Nigerian is free to do, and also go round Lagos to confirm the projects on the list, instead of sitting down in the comfort of his home to vituperate about Sanwo-Olu and his administration.
*Omolale sent in this piece from Lagos.
