Obasa’s Proposed Discriminatory Legislations

 POLITICAL NOTES

The Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Mudashiru Obasa, last Thursday shocked many residents of the state when he declared that the state lawmakers will make laws in the areas of property, titles, commerce and economy to protect indigenes of the state.

Obasa vowed that the lawmakers will “reverse all that is reversible to protect the interest of the indigenes.”

“Lagos is a Yoruba land as against the assertions of some people that it is a no-man’s land,” he said, adding that “we also aim at achieving our collective goals of creating a robust legislative framework that protects the interest of our people.”

It is not clear if there are laws in Lagos State that are against the interest of the indigenous people and that need to be reversed as promised by the speaker.

What is certain is that a few members of the ruling class in Nigeria preach national integration and cohesion but promote ethnic, religious and regional discriminations in their actions to maintain their grip on political power.

The concept of Lagos as “no-man’s land” was first used by one of the past leaders of Lagos State to show how the state accommodated the people from different states without discrimination.

But in the build-up to the most recent general election, some members of the political class twisted the meaning and attributed it to a different group of Nigerians to play up one ethnic group against the other to achieve their selfish political ambitions.

Nigerians from different ethnic and religious backgrounds not only vote freely during elections in the UK, United States, Canada and other countries where they are resident but also contest and win elections in those countries.

But some members of the political class feel that it is a rare privilege to allow certain Nigerians resident in Lagos to cast their votes freely in the state, describing it as an “interference in the politics of the state.”

Nigeria is a federation where every state is constitutionally empowered to make laws for the welfare of the people, provided such laws do not conflict with the Nigerian Constitution.

However, laws that are targeted at any particular group are cruel and if all the states embark on making discriminating laws, the unity of Nigeria will be the greatest casualty.