Tinubu Denies Rift With Fashola

The National Leader of the
All Progressives Congress (APC), Afwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has denied ever sporsoring any recent attacks against the immediate past governor of Lagos State, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola.
Fashola in recent time, has been under serious attacks by which alleged that the former governor was corrupt and therefore incompetent to be appointed a Minister by President Muhammadu Buhari.
A report on the Lagos State government’s website alleged that Fashola spent N78.3m on his personal website, www.tundefashola.com and N139m to construct two boreholes at the Lagos State Government House, Ikeja, when he was governor.
There had been speculations that the reports were being sponsored by Tinubu as part of efforts to discredit Fashola and deny him the opportunity of being appointed into President’s cabinet.
But Tinubu, who is Fashola’s predecessor and political mentor, denied the allegations, saying the series of attacks against Fashola were being sponsored by the opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) with the aim of causing disaffection between him and Fashola.
The APC leader, in a statement issued by his media office on Wednesday and made available to The Tide, said he had nothing against Fashola, adding that Fashola served the state meritoriously for eight years.
Condemning those calling for Fashola’s probe, Tinubu said he and Fashola will forever remain close because they had struggled together.
According to him, any criticism of Fashola was an indicatment on him because he was instrumental to making Fashola governor.
The statement partly reads, “Our political opponents now try to steal victory when their only entitlement is resounding defeat. Having fared woefully with the electorate, their game plan is to saw discord within the ranks of the party the people had chosen to lead them. The PDP hopes to strike a division in the APC, in that way weakening us and our ability to govern.
“This brings me to recent developments in Lagos political scene. Born of this motley stew is the recent gossip mongering that I have willfully instigated false and negative reports against former Governor Fashola to thwart him from being appointed to a major post in the Buhari administration.
“I want to declare clearly and categorically that these rancid attacks do not come from me nor do I endorse them. Neither my hand nor my heart is in these mean submissions. I deplore them.
“An attack against the performance of Governor Fashola is indirectly an attack against me and the edifice of achievements we have constructed in leading Lagos State out of a protracted time of stagnation and into an era of sustained progress and development”.

Boye Salau