Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, has asked Nigerians to be patient with the ruling party, saying the party indeed promised change in 2014 when it was campaigning but that it never promised to effect the changes within four years.
Fashola said this at the inauguration of President Buhari’s 2019 campaign in Ikeja, Lagos State on Tuesday November 20th.
“In 2014, we said we would change Nigeria but we did not say we will do it in four years. This election therefore is a choice between going forward to the next level or backward because the work has already begun.
Since I became a minister, the president has never interfered in what I do. He has never lobbied me for contract and I can assure you that it is like that with other ministers.
The oil revenue the former government took advantage of, what did they use it for?” he asked
Speaking further, Fashola took a swipe at the main opposition party, PDP. According to him, the opposition would not have lost the election in 2015 if they had performed very well.
“We have watched what happened in 16 years of nothing to show. Some people are trying to rewrite history now. You don’t sack a good employee. If they are living in delusion and say it was good governance, why did they lose the job? In 2017, the budget on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway was cut from N30 billion to N10 billion. You know who was presiding (then).
“Buhari has inaugurated an infrastructure development fund to ensure that Lagos-Ibadan, Second Niger Bridge and Abuja to Kano Road would never suffer funding problem again. Just yesterday, the two contractors on the Lagos Ibadan Expressway got a total of N15 billion to continue the work. The same thing is true of the Ikorodu-Sagamu Road. That road, for 16 years, was nothing to write about.”