That situation has again successfully repeated itself in the emergence of Ambode and the frustration of the many capable but impotent other candidates that dared and defied their generous but ever vigilant and unsleeping godfather who secured the APC governorhip candidacy for Ambode. Now, what are the moral implications of such imposition of a green horn in politics on the governorship of a mega city like Lagos? They are monumental and raise serious moral issues on eligibility, fairness, merit, transparency and democracy.
This is because in any political system called a democracy these values must be acknowledged as part if not the main working tools of governance and leadership. It does not matter really that the losers in the APC primaries have been placated with the usual crumbs from the master’s table and have been told to play ball or face the wrath of the godfather and his huge but deadly and unforgiving apparatus. What we are concerned with here is the quality of leadership that emerges from such lop sided and hand-picking arrangement in a democratic dispensation like the APC – run Lagos State Government. We say that it is an arrangement that makes change impossible in Lagos state and puts the coffers of the state in the very deep pocket of the godfather of the APC, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. It is a very immoral, opaque way of electing a governor supposedly by mass participation of the members of the APC but manipulated deftly and with impunity by a single hand which has done so in the last 16 years.
It also does not matter that the outgoing Lagos State Governor who has now been drafted into campaigning for the hadpicked Ambode had no choice than to hold the microphone hard and firm at Ambode campaign rallies and shout himself hoarse if he wanted to leave office safely and retire peacefully. What again is important is that this sort of selection stifles transparency, promotes nepotism, creates political dynasties and makes accountability and honesty the hall marks of progressive democracy and society impossible in Lagos State, which has the largest electorate in Nigeria in these coming elections.
Certainly that leaves the Lagos electorate no choice than to call the bluff of the APC and its crude power -seeking and grabbing electoral machinery that has successfully made a mockery of democracy in the state in the last 16 years. We say it is immoral and undemocratic for a party to be allowing one man to choose who will govern the state at any time and in all places in an enlightened and cosmopolitan city like Lagos where leadership talents exist in their thousands if not millions.
This fraudulent mask of deceit in political leadership must be torn and rent asunder at this coming elections. This is the only way Lagosians should show that they are not spineless and castrated people who are unthinking and malleable all the time in the way they participate in selecting those who are to govern them. Their liberation time is here and now and they should just troop out on the governorship election date and vote for Jimi Agbaje the PDP candidate and nail the coffin to 16 years of misrule and stop the Ambode undemocratic selection before it can ever start to lead and govern the state.