The 2007 pension law is a blank check for expired governors, deputies, and members of their immediate families.
“So the moral is clear. It is the workers—les industrials—of all ranks and hierarchies who merit the highest rewards of society, and the idlers who deserve the least. But what do we find? By a strange miscarriage of justice, it is just the opposite: those who do the least get the most.” – Robert Heilbroner in The Worldly Philosophers.
If Mr Bola Tinubu today, visits a cathouse and, via his johnson, gets infected with HIV/AIDS, the Lagos state government, with taxpayers' money will foot his medical bill even if it runs to a billion naira.
If Mrs Buckner Akerele's first son visits his girlfriend and sits on a nail planted by a rival, the Lagos State government will pay for the cost of removing the nail fragments from his anus.
If Mr Femi Pedro snatches the hubby of Dino Melaye and for that, the misogynist from Kogi chops his joystick off, the Lagos state government will pay for the purchase of super glue for fixing the j-cap.
If Sarah Sosan offends her husband and in retaliation, the stud engages in a bestial act, the Lagos State government will use taxes paid by the masses to send him to a psychiatrist.
If Mr Raji Fashola's daughter goes to a club, smokes weed, sniffs cocaine, and drinks urine to stupor, thereby inflicting both physical and psychological afflictions on herself, the Lagos state government will send her to a place of reformation with the taxes paid by decorous citizens.
If Mrs Orelope Adefulire returns to her matrimonial home at the wee hours of night and her husband descends on her with fist and double-barrelled buttocks, causing her to see a vision of men with five heads, the Lagos state government will use my tax money to foot her bill at the optician's desk.
All these were made possible as a result of the pension law the Asiwaju of crooks, signed in 2007.
Every item on that repugnant law had a price—from 50% of a sitting governor's basic salary to six brand new cars in three years—except healthcare. It's a blank check for expired governors, deputies, and members of their immediate families.
The same largesse will soon spill over to expired speakers and deputies—all put into reality by the forty prodigals in the House of Assembly.
"With the back to the wall, the knife at his throat, or to be more exact, the electrode on his genitals, the colonized is bound to stop telling stories." Replace colonized with oppressed and see Fanon speak to you, the homeless, money-less, jobless Lagosian.
With a foreign debt profile of $1.43bn, these larcenous characters have begun spending the monies our unborn children are yet to make. When Lagosians are tired, they’ll take their state back from the hands of these individuals whom the Oxford scholar, Francis Edgeworth called “pleasure machines”.
Modiu Olaguro writes from Lagos. You can reach him at [email protected].
