Lagos PDP chides Fashola over ‘Humpty Dumpty’ comment

Lagos state chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has criticised Governor Babatunde Fashola over his recent comments on the state of the nation, describing his positions as ‘exaggerated political punches’ aimed at running the nation down.
In a statement, yesterday, Lagos PDP Chairman, Mr. Olatunji Shelle said the governor’s “Humpty Dumpty” comment about the situation in the country was in particular exaggerated and misplaced.
Fashola had at a Christmas lecture at the Yoruba Tennis Club in Lagos declared that Nigeria was a dysfunctional state because of the diverse challenges facing the country, among other issues, using the Humpty Dumpty analogy to situate the Nigerian condition which, he said, had fallen from the Olympian heights.
But in his reaction, Shelle said such degrading comments by politicians in opposition were self-serving to paint the Federal Government in bad light.
“Everyday one reads the same line of political orchestration coming from the opposition which is unbecoming because the image of the nation is affected by such comments”, he said.
He said that while there were challenges facing the nation like other nations of the world, it could not have been a realistic evaluation to say Nigeria had fallen from the Olympian heights to such scaring extent as narrated by the governor. This, he said, did not recommend Governor Fashola as a patriot he wanted the public to believe in his comments.
The party chairman further noted that in spite of the challenges facing the nation, a lot of progress is being made to advance socio-economic development.
“For the avoidance of doubt, that Humpty Dumpty characterisation by governor Fashola to describe the Nigerian condition is misplaced, unpatriotic and unacceptable.
“It only points to the series of such orchetration by the oppostion using degrading comments to tarnish the image of the Federal Government. But the discerning public can differentiate between genuine concern and political grandstanding as we have seen from the opposition in recent times.
“The nation is facing challenges like other nations but it cannot be said that we are not making progress in the various sectors of our national economy. And to that extent, Governor Fashola’s unguarded comments were unfortunate”, he stated.
He accused Fashola of not fighting corruption in the corridors of power in the state and challenged him to create jobs as well as doing new projects saying the recetly commissioned Kodesho road and Simbiat Abiola way in Ikeja were not the kind of projects needing such fanfare because they were not new projects.
He also urged the governor to pay attention to on-going projects in the state and ensure their completion, citing the intances of the Lagos-Badagry Expressway, the rail line project, ferry services to make use of the waterways and doing the various inner-city roads across the state.