APC decries Agbaje’s threat to cancel Lekki-Épé Road concession

FOR saying that he will cancel the Public Private Participation arrangement that led to the execution of the Lekki-Épé Expreessway, the governorship candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in Lagos State, Mr. Jimmy Agbaje, has come under verbal fire from the Lagos State chapter of All Progressives Congress (APC).

  The party said the threat was an irrational election promise directed at foreign investors, which would “cripple the economy of Lagos and affect the wobbling Nigerian economy.”

   In a statement by the Lagos State Publicity Secretary of the APC, Joe Igbokwe, the party said that it was “quite surprising that at this age and time when the drive for foreign investment is needed to break the shackles of economic doom, an aspiring candidate to the Lagos State governorship stool should issue such naked threat to investors to boost his electoral chances.”

  The party went on: “An Agbaje/PDP government will spell doom as the sixteen disastrous PDP wreckage of the country. Two days after Agbaje’s disastrous election promise to cancel the foreign-driven concession on the Lekki-Épé Expressway, Punch newspapers carried a report that foreign investors, alarmed by the economic and political risks in the country, had pulled out N783.17 billion from the Nigerian Stock Exchange. 

  “This is an alarming economic statistics that should worry every Nigerian but in his desperation to con Lagosians of votes, Agbaje is threatening to stop foreign investment in Lagos such as the concession arrangement behind the construction and subsequent tolling of Lekki-Épé Expressway.

  “Lagosians will like to know from Agbaje and his PDP why their PDP federal government is promising a non-existent 1.8 kilometers Second Niger Bridge that will be tolled from at least six positions for 25 years while he is making a campaign issue of tolling a well delivered Lekki-Épé Expressway that meets the great needs of the beneficiary towns for a relief from endless traffic bottlenecks the PDP federal government has turned blind eyes to.

“Again, Lagosians are aware that the dilapidated Airport Road, which the PDP federal government has abandoned while playing politics with completed world class roads in Lagos is tolled and we wonder why Agbaje and Lagos PDP have not promised Lagosians that their assumed government will not only stop toll collection on the road but will build in the unlikely event that they control the government of Lagos State.

  “Lagos APC notes that out of frustration from the criminal negligence the PDP federal government has meted out to federal roads in Lagos for the past sixteen years, the Lagos State government has undertaken the reconstruction of many federal roads in Lagos and is currently delivering world class reconstruction of such roads like the Lagos- Ikorodu Road and the Lagos- Badagry Expressway which serves as a gateway to the country but which had been completely abandoned by the PDP federal government.”