By Charles Kumolu
AHEAD of tomorrow’s Local Government elections in Lagos State, the Action Congress of Nigeria,ACN, has expressed optimism that it would emerge victorious. Publicity Secretary of the party Mr. Joe Igbokwe, in this interview, noted that the Peoples Democratic Party,PDP, does not pose any serious challenge to ACN

CAN we know the level of preparedness of ACN ahead the Local Government elections?

We are wining the elections with a landslide. I have always said that we don’t have competitors in this election. PDP has boycotted this election three times since 1999. I warned them in 2008 that if they make an attempt to boycott this election, it will take them thirty years to come back to the mainstream in Lagos.

Joe Igbokwe,

And that is what is happening. I can’t see them making any headway in Lagos. We are not worried, we are fully mobilised even though we don’t have serious competitors in Lagos. We are fighting as if we have a competitor running neck to neck with us. In other words we are living no stone unturned. We are working twenty hours daily and we are into door to door house campaign.

But your party is accused of not doing well in fixing Lagos inner city roads?

We have seen some media publications, which are being sponsored by our competitors against us, saying that the inner roads are bad.

They were not fair enough to balance it by reflecting any of these roads that we are constructing. We have not promised that we will solve all the problems in Lagos in one day, we will be addressing them one by one. And we will continue to maintain the tempo of what we have started, we will not waver this is the land of excellence.

Every leader writes his name on gold through the choices they make. I am sure Fashola is making the right choices.

The only limitation he has is that we have 20 local governments and 39 Local Development Council Authorities ,LCDAs and the LCDAs have not been recognised. So what we get for twenty is what we use for all of them. We have the problem of funds at the local government level. They have to pay workers, primary school teachers and other things. The local governments don’t have the capacity to build the kind of roads Fashola is constructing. If they are using roads as campaign strategy, it is going to fail because Fashola is doing a standard job in Lagos. PDP is not an alternative anywhere in the South-West because ACN government is at peace with the people of South-West, including Lagos.

There are claims that LAISEC is working in favour of the ACN by dropping PDP candidates?

That is a lie. They made this allegation two weeks ago and we gave them time to prove that LAISEC is working for us. Yet there is no proof, they are just making allegations. What I want to advise PDP is for them to put their house in order. They should stop blaming people for the problem they created for themselves.

This is a contest and what is expected is for them to focus on how to participate, they are making allegations. Where do we have the time for all these nonsense? It is difficult for anybody to cheat in Lagos, you cant cheat anybody in Lagos, what is needed is for them to go and police the pooling booths.

While they are talking, blaming themselves and manufacturing excuses, we are working. We do the work. Tomorrow when we win they will start complaining, when they did not do any work. They are scared of spending money, so they are not serious. I have not seen PDP rally anywhere. They should go and put their house in order otherwise they will loose again. Lagosians are ready to vote out ACN