A victory for good governance: Re-elected Governor thanks Lagosians

Babatunde Fashola, re-elected governor of Lagos State and candidate of Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), has described his emergence as winner in Tuesday’s gubernatorial polls as “victory for good governance and democracy.” The ACN won all the 40 seats in the state House of Assembly making the party the sole controller of Nigeria’s most populous state and economic nerve centre.

“On behalf of the Action Congress of Nigeria, I accept this very overwhelming mandate that the people of Lagos have given to me, my deputy our three senators, 24 House of Representatives candidate and 40 House of Assembly

 members. For me, this is a victory for democracy, it’s a victory for Lagos, and it is a victory for good governance and for the development of our people. I thank God Almighty for this great day,” Fashola said while making his acceptance speech at State House, Marina, after the results were announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) yesterday.

“April 26 was a day of triumph and victory for progressive governance. Everything was possible, but God willing, good governance prevailed. I have so many people to thank, our party chairman, the party chairman at the state level , my party, our leader, the Asiwaju of Lagos and so many people, my wife , my children, my parents, members of the Lagos family, those who opened their palaces to receive us, those who opened their town halls and town meetings to us and their markets to receive our message of goodwill, I thank you all, I thank the public servants , all the transport workers, the ‘okada’ riders, the market men and women, everybody, members of the media for taking our messagefar and near,” the governor said.

Fashola also particularly thanked the leadership of INEC, saying “most times, things pointed to disaster and difficult times ahead, but I think that with these elections, we have reasoned with ourselves and said that we would not accept certain things anymore.”

Fashola, who congratulated the INEC chairman, Attahiru Jega, and members of the National Youths Service Corps (NYSC) for a thorough job, noted however, there was still a lot of work to do about elections in the country, but that progress had been made which must be built upon.

“I would like to congratulate Jega and all of his team. Let me single out the young men and women of the National Youth Service Corps, and I think that this victory, this threshold is really their day and they have showed that good things have begun to evolve in this country. They have stood up for their generation and I think they have been better for this nation.

“First, they gave us a voter register and we accepted it; secondly, they gave us an election and by many standard of our previous performance we accepted it, in spite of the challenges. But in that process, many of them lost their lives, they are heroes, they are martyrs, I want to use this opportunity to appeal to everybody who holds office from today to remember that they (NYSC) shed their blood so that they can hold office and I think they must not die in vain.

“The only way we can continue to immortalise their efforts is to go out there and do the work, the electorate demand of us to change the lives of the people to make things better within the means of our ability. I thank the electorate, this is a bigger mandate than the mandate that brought me into office, it’s almost double. My understanding of it is that it is demanded of us to do more than we have done,” Fashola said.