Izuchukwu Okosi
Former gubernatorial aspirant of the African Democratic Congress, Funso Doherty has praised the effort of the Lagos state government to address the controversies surrounding the outrageous budgets and procurement undertaken by the Babajide Sanwo-Olu administration.
Doherty however believes that the state government ought to have also appropriately reviewed the Public Procurement Document before making it available to the public.
Join our WhatsApp ChannelOn the subject of Lagos State government being unresponsive to the people’s demand for transparency in procurement awards, Doherty was in the affirmative.
“There are some truths to that and we should always push the envelope in terms of holding the feet of the government and its agencies, not just to put out information (but) where there are gaps to insist that they do the right thing.
“I think that’s the spirit actually of this work that we have done – to say that when people know that there is a searchlight on them, they sit up and act differently,” Doherty told Channels Television.
“And I think I learn it like any other citizen could have done it and maybe I have the profile of being a politician so it gave it whims in a sense.
“The way it has caught on, this particular tweet (calling for transparency) has got 7 1/2 million tweets and I don’t know any tweet has that kind of response so it tells you that it touched a nerve that people have.
”So it is then important that the report that you (in reference to the state government) put out should have integrity, people must be able to rely on the figures, you would expect that there would be a review process of the information before it appears in the public domain.
“So even if there were going to be these kind of errors normal operations should suggest that a review process should bring out errors like this,” he said.
“And more importantly, people have gone further to doing their own work and coming up with things that even we did not see. Now people are talking about other states.
“This is an important component of democracy,” Doherty quipped.
Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu had refuted claims that he paid N200 million to attorneys who defended his election in court using public coffers.
Izuchukwu Okosi is a Nigerian sports and entertainment journalist with two decades of experience in the media industry having begun his media journey in 2002 as an intern at Mundial Sports International (MSI) and Africa Independent Television (AIT), owners of Daar Communications Plc.
