The EFCC is looking into claims that Gbajabiamila and Fashola moved a project from Anambra to Surulere.
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, and the Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, are the targets of an investigation by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offenses Commission (ICPC) into an alleged project involving the swapping of constituencies.
The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), a civil rights advocacy group, issued the demand in a statement on Sunday that was signed by Emmanuel Onwubiko, the organization’s national coordinator.
The right-wing group, which condemned the alleged execution of projects originally billed for the Federal College of Education (Technical), Umunze, Anambra State, in Surulere, said the two anti-corruption agencies should act based on the evidence presented by a viral video rather than waiting for formal petitions.
HURIWA also raised concern over the fact that President Muhammadu Buhari proceeded to put into law the Appropriation Bill 2023 that was delivered to him in early January of this year despite noticing that it was substantially padded.
According to the rights group, the president should have communicated his concerns to the anti-graft organisations so that individuals responsible for the illegal padding of the budget would be apprehended, tried, and punished in accordance with the law.
Regarding the accusations against Gbajabiamila and Fashola, Onwubiko stated that if the Speaker and the Minister were proven guilty after an inquiry, they should be detained and brought before the law promptly.
According to reports, a news commentator in a popular video documented how a project for inner roads for the Federal College of Education (Technical), Umunze, in the Surulere I constituency of Lagos State was discovered to have been executed in the Orumba South Local Government Area of Anambra State, Nigeria.
In fact, the school was named as the customer on a project board erected at a Surulere site for a project in Gbajabiamila’s district; the project involved the construction and reconstruction of an inner access road in Olodi Okuta/Aralule Akinyele Street. As the project facilitator, the speaker’s name was also written in capital letters.
The statement made available to PlatinumPost in Abuja stated that “the commentator who shared the video also showed graphic evidence to demonstrate that the said Federated College of Education, which is purportedly the client of the contractors constructing the roads in Surulere, has no functional roads just as the federal educational facility in Anambra State is in a state of dysfunctionality and poor infrastructure.”
The current Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, and the Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, are allegedly accused in this widely circulated video of diverting infrastructure development away from the South-East and depriving the South-East of its fair share of infrastructure, which is scandalous and heartbreaking, according to HURIWA’s Onwubiko.
The Federal Government is actively renovating historic state-inherited federal housing in Surulere, the Shitta housing estate, and parks in Surulere, as depicted in the film and as facts have proved. Surulere really boasts the most street lights per block of any place in Nigeria. Almost every neighbourhood has a street light. All interior roads are asphalt and have effective drainage systems. In Surulere and throughout Lagos, all state and local government roads are being built by the federal government, which is led by Gbajabiamila as speaker and Fashola as minister of works. The best public hospitals and schools are in Surulere. same as Daura, Katsina State, and the president’s hometown.
Unfortunately, President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration has abandoned a lot of federal highways in the South-East. The Okigwe/Arondizuogu/Akokwa/Amichi to Oba Junction federal road is at the top of this list of roads.
But while society frequently follows the road, these roads around the South-East were purposefully abandoned from 1999 until the present day, in what plainly appears to be a planned plot to undermine the region’s economy and social fabric. HURIWA also tasked the EFCC and ICPC with looking into ORPHAN ROADS PROJECTS, which the rights group claims are the conduit pipes used by federal government officials to line their pockets with ill-gotten gains while exploiting the people of Nigeria, who deserve high-quality and functional infrastructure development that is fairly distributed throughout the federation.
“HURIWA learned that the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency, the Niger Delta Development Commission, and other government ministries, departments, and agencies are doing quick interventions of what they call palliative work (patchwork), which often runs into a couple of billions below the Federal Executive Council’s approval. Orphan roads now abound in the South-East.
This includes, but is not limited to, the top politicians from the South. The Igbo politicians, especially those who have led the legislative branch of government, cannot deny that all political parties are involved in this.
The rights group argued that the allegedly switched inner roadways project, which was intended for the Federal College of Education (Technical), Umunze but carried out in Surulere, is so scandalous and that the Igbo leaders’ role in it is so obvious.
“We cannot permit this.” Start the investigation right away. Simply put, the commentator’s video clip in the viral video opened up a can of worms. Just like any previous gang of thieves who have damaged Ndigbo, anyone involved in this horrible affair has to be named and held accountable. The EFCC and the ICPC need to start working right away.
HURIWA also denounced federal lawmakers from the south-east of Nigeria who do nothing or even collude with those whose purported area of expertise is actively diverting major infrastructure projects from the south-east to their own zones outside of it.
The right-wing group called on the EFCC and the ICPC to detain and bring charges against South-East legislators who colluded to deny their region a piece of the vital national infrastructure development that other zones have been receiving.
