In a statement issued on Thursday by the Convener, Comrade Adeniyi A. Sulaiman, and Director, Media and Strategy, Comrade Olaolu Oladipo, the Save Lagos Group alleged that the state government has earmarked a huge amount of public funds for the rally.
In the statement, the Group also called on the state government to come out clean on its role in the rally slated to hold in Lagos on Saturday, saying “Information available to us indicates the state government has committed a huge amount of money for the rally.”
The civil society group also queried the rationale behind the rally, which it stated was not being done for the benefit of the masses of the state but rather to satisfy the ego of some prominent leaders of the ruling APC.
According to the statement, “We wonder what benefit would accrue to the people of the state from Saturday’s rally rather than the fact that it was organised to massage the ego of prominent leaders of the APC.
“What is even more confounding to us is the fact that the money or resources to be deployed would be coming from the pool of taxes paid by the people of the state who would have loved to see such resources utilised for developmental purposes rather than what it is being planned for by the state government.”
The Save Lagos Group has further called on the state government to desist from such attempt to fritter the state’s resources on the rally, which it describes as frivolous and self-serving, saying should the planners of the event go ahead with the rally it would organise its own counter rally.
“We of the Save Lagos Group are calling on the state government and the planners of the event to stop the rally, failure to do so would compel us to organise a counter rally to demonstrate that the motive of the organisers is far from being very altruistic,” the statement reads.
On its next moves should the rally go ahead, the Group also vowed to organise a counter rally of over five million residents to protest what it described as an assault to the collective wellbeing of the people of the state.
“We will be compelled to call on residents of the state to a mass protest against attempt to loot their treasury by self serving politicians who don’t mean well for them and who are out to rob them of their collective development,” it read.
•Photo shows Senator Bola Tinubu.
