The Deputy Governor of Lagos State, Dr Obafemi Hamzat, has reiterated that the Lagos State government will not allow faceless people on social media to promote ethnic bigotry to divide the people of Lagos State.
Hamzat said this in an interview with ARISE NEWS on Tuesday, where he discussed a viral post on social media X (formerly Twitter), which had had threatened a massive protest from August 20th to 30th, 2024, under the hashtag #IgboMustGo, to which he responded, “It’s just nonsense, and we will not allow it.”
The Deputy Governor said, “The issue of the Igbos, I think, is one of the hazards of Social Media. These faceless people just came up and said Igbos must leave, absolute nonsense. And that’s why you could see what the governor said, the governor immediately denounced it. The Lagos, that’s not who we are, that’s just not who we are. Since we’re all children, we’ve all lived together in the state, and there is no need for people to become ethnic bigots. But again, like we said, some people will try to do whatever to divide us, but we will never allow that.”
Speaking on what he believed led to these issues, Hamzat said, “For me, public commentary is a problem in this country, and we might not all agree, but public commentary is a problem, and I will tell you why. How is it that the most important factor is not what we address in our land?”
“We all did economics, and we said land is a factor of production. When you try to manage land, we ethnicise it in this land. So, that is one thing that is- whatever you want to do, everything you’re building, a house here, it’s on land. So, how is it that we don’t manage our land? When you want to manage land, physical planning is the problem of West Africa, bottom line. We will never be rich if we don’t plan our land. But if we want to plan it, what happens? Oh, you do this because he’s Hausa, or he’s Igbo, rubbish! So, the bottom line is let us focus on the real issues,” he added.
Still in the discussion of ethnic bigotry and prejudice, Hamzat’s attention was drawn to a tweet by Special Adviser to the President, Bayo Onanuga tweet from the 18th of March 2023, where Onanuga said, “Let 2023 be the last time of Igbo interference in Lagos politics.”
Hamzat said he didn’t see the post, explaining, “Like I said, I didn’t see it, and I mean it, I never saw it. And I know him personally, so it’s something I could have called him and said, Egbon, what are you doing?
“I will call him because it’s wrong, it’s just wrong… It’s absolute nonsense. It’s just- that shouldn’t happen. And you know, like I said, we all need to be very careful, because words do have consequences, and as such, people should not say things like that.”
Hamzat was then asked of measures that were being put in place to ensure that perpetrators of this movement are arrested, to which he responded, “What is going on in terms of fishing out the people, it’s not something I can discuss, but I can assure you, in the next few days, you will see what will happen.”
He went on to say, “People just hide under whatever and just put something on social media. I can assure you, everybody, like we’ve said, the governor has condemned it, even in the speech of the president, he condemned ethnic bigotry. So, the reality is that people are just social media tigers, let them keep- but like I said, SSS is working on it, hopefully they will fish them out very soon, and you know, they will have their day in court, then the court will decide what is to happen.”
“The investigation is going on, hopefully, this protest will not last, the police are all focused on all these things, but hopefully the SSS, the security apparatus will do what they need to do and get this guy, because you see, sometimes, some of these people are not even in Nigeria. You don’t know where they are, but let them do their investigations”
Hamzat then called for calm in Lagos State, saying, “Let us all cool public commentary, the way we all talk, let us all cool things down. You know, when actions, every action that you take, is weaponised, it becomes a problem. We are indirectly encouraging people to do the wrong things. So, that’s where I start from. Let’s all calm things down.”
Ozioma Samuel-Ugwuezi
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