Omo Eko Pataki, a forum of Lagos indigenes has called on Lagosians and Nigerians generally to vote wisely in the next year’s election.

In a release titled ‘Lagos: Time for a new order’ issued by Omo Eko Pataki and signed by its Chairman, Chief Olabode George; its Trustees, Major General Tajudeen Olanrewaju and Mr Gbadebo Dallass as well as its Secretary, Prince Uthman Shodipe-Dosunmu, said “surely we can’t continue like this. We must make a new turn for the greater good of our nation.

“We must change our narrow vision for a more embracing national accommodation.  We must swing towards a more progressive, sincere, genuine democratic union. Nigeria can be a better place.  So is our Lagos.

“The enduring aphorism holds that all “politics is local. “ It is a truism that has always been valid since the Athenians first set up the Agora around 508 BC.  It is what is closer to us that naturally takes priority.

“This is why we are back again as Ọmọ Eko Pataki to dwell on the troubled history of our state.  Lagos state is indeed ensnared, captured, held in unbelievable serfdom for 21 years by the caprice of one man.  It is a shame and at once a blighting tragedy.

Taxes are rising and our people are getting poorer. Billions of income is made and yet our infrastructures are decaying. Lagos is an oil producing state but where is the derivative revenue? Why is the oil income not reflected in the state budget? Puzzling!

Wondering how Lagos got it wrong, Omo Eko Pataki said “The very state of excellence which once determined the Nigerian fortune, excelling everyone else in the fields of commerce, in the groves of academia, in the bastion of entrepreneurship, in the expanses of medicine, in the toils of industry, in virtually all fields of human endeavours – has now been reduced to another backwater debtor state owing well over 3.28 trillion naira in domestic debts alone despite generating  665 billion naira every year in internally generated revenue.

“Definitely a lot is wrong with the governance of our state. The year 2023 is the Lagosian inflection point. It is our defining moment to turn the fortunes of our state around and restore a new equitable order.

“But it cannot be done alone. Together, men and women of goodwill must come to the barricades and speak out loud and clear in total rejection of the tyrannical man of straw who would play God with our ancestral holdings. “Lagos must start on a new slate