Three years after moving its headquarters from Lagos to Abuja, the Federal Government, through the Minister of Aviation, ordered the immediate relocation of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) back to Lagos. As expected, this has generated a mixed reaction from Nigerians. While some commend the decision, others took a swipe at the President for the decision. Minister of Aviation, Mr. Festus Keyamo, attributed the decision of the FG to relocate FAAN back to Lagos as a means of saving costs and to stop wasting the meager resources of the government.<\/p>\n
As expected, some northern political groups led by the Arewa Consultative Forum condemned the decision of the federal government to move FAAN and some departments of CBN from Abuja to Lagos. In a statement signed by the national publicity secretary, Prof T A Muhammad Baba, the group views it as a deliberate plot to undermine northern interests. The group called on the relevant agencies to retrace their steps and apply other honest means of addressing the alleged overcrowding in offices. They added that, contrary to the situation in Lagos, there is plenty of land in the federal capital territory for the expansion of offices and other infrastructural facilities, and such factors should not be used to obfuscate sinister motives, the group noted.<\/p>\n
Also reacting, Senator Ali Ndume sounded a note of warning to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on the issue. Ndume said there will be political consequences if the FG doesn’t revert the relocation immediately.<\/p>\n
Are these reactions justifiable? President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is an advocate of special status for Lagos State. He has drummed support for the need for the FG to grant special status to Lagos, and now that he is President of Nigeria, some sections of the country will view the recent action as an attempt to gradually move the seat of power to Lagos through the back door.<\/p>\n
But I think beyond this, we must see issues beyond the whims and caprices of regional sentiments. President Tinubu can’t unilaterally move the Federal Capital Territory back to Lagos without the approval\/consent of the National Assembly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Three years after moving its headquarters from Lagos to Abuja, the Federal Government, through the Minister of Aviation, ordered the immediate relocation of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) back to Lagos. As expected, this has generated a mixed reaction from Nigerians. While some commend the decision, others took a swipe at the President […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":16232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[176],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16231"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16241,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16231\/revisions\/16241"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}