Executive Director of the Lagos International Trade Fair Complex (LITFC), Mrs. Lucy Ajayi has said that the stakeholders in the complex have nothing to worry about as their apprehension on a rumored concession of the complex is being addressed.
Ajayi who talked with New Dawn’s team recently at the Trade Fair Complex said the Buhari-led government would not watch the stakeholders suffer.
Earlier, the stakeholders had embarked on a demonstration at the Trade Fair Complex over a rumour making the round the complex was going to be given to a concessioner.
Explaining reason for the demonstration by the stakeholders, Ajayi said, “They are fighting against the concession. The PDP government did the concession; it was going to be or 30 years. The new government aborted it after nine years without anything to show for it,” she said.
Obviously the stakeholders do not want a repeat of what they suffered in the hand of the former handler.
Ajayi also said the complex under her administration has brought in N1bn within a year while the former handler brought in nothing in nine years.
“But in one year we have given the Federal Government about N1bn,” she said.
The DG who got a wind of the protest and moved in to placate the angry protesters in their hundreds, said she had moved into the complex before the crowd began gathering.
“The whole market people came out, I got a wind of it earlier and I had to come as early as 5:55am so as to prevent a breakdown of law and order. I had to come out to address the crowd.
“I had to beg them. They raised so many issues. One was that they said Lagos State wants to take over the place and be collecting fees from them while they were already paying to the Federal Government.
“They also raised issues about the concession of the place. Those were the major two issues. And I calmed them down that there is no cause for alarm and that I will talk to my boss. I told them Buhari government is a friendly government and they will look into it and they should be calm and go back to their business premises,” she said.
She told New Dawn that the last handler of the complex had breached the contractual agreement and that was why the Federal Government aborted the deal.
“He breached all the contractual agreements, the first thing, it was a developmental concession. The revenue was the case, he didn’t develop anything. Secondly he made lives unbearable for the stakeholders here and thirdly he didn’t remit a dime to the Federal Government. So they had to revoke the contract after nine years,” she said.
Continuing, she said, “Well, I won’t say there shouldn’t be a concession. What I would say is that there should be the presence of the government in this place which we gave the concessioner to do but he didn’t so we had to revoke the agreement in August 2017.
“The management took over in November of 2017, so that means we have been here for one year and four months. If I’m not mistaking the first thing we did was to call a meeting of the stakeholders and to tell them the state of things and to tell them Buhari means well for them and that we are here to find out what went wrong,” she said.
Ajayi who was the only female among the 18 member committee to discuss the merger of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), told New Dawn that, “Out of the 18 member committee of the CPC I was the only woman on the merger talks that formed APC. So I am sure he had made up his mind that whatever thing he is doing, Lucy Ajayi must be there, I don’t know.
“Most people didn’t know this was a Federal parastatal, this position is an equivalence of a DG. Mine is ED/CEO, meaning I can defend a budget. I have the last say here. Some of my colleagues are just ED and not CEO. They now see things differently,” she explained.
On the concessioner who failed to remit fund to the Federal coffers, Ajayi said only the Bureu of Public Enterprise (BPE) could answer what would happen about the case.
“I think BPE can answer. When I came I took him to EFCC, he was detained for three weeks and they left him on health ground. Mine was to take him there; I am not a debt collector.
“Since they have successfully taken him out of my way, mine is to focus. BPE was given the assignment to make him pay the N6.5bn he owed,” she said.
On whether the debtor is dangerous to the system, Ajayi said she has put security in place to forestall any breakdown of law and order around the complex.
“I pay policemen every day to keep this complex the way it is. Not from my subvention, but from goodwill and overhead.”
Ajayi who is the Yeye Oge of Isolo and Yeye Mesho of Abule Ado said the chieftaincy titles came as a result of her contribution to the development of the communities.
Chairman of the Mechanic Village, Mr. Muritala Mohammed Olawuyi also told New Dawn the reason for the protest at the Trade Fair Complex.
“Why we were protesting is that we don’t want to experience what we experienced under the concession again. He collected money from us without reminting to the Federal Government. We were in the Federal High Court.
“Our protest now is that we want to deal directly with the Federal Government. We don’t want any concession again. He took money from us, he didn’t pay the government and he wanted to throw us out. We don’t want that experience again,” he said.
Like Olawuyi, Mr. Tony Obi, President of Balogun Business Association (BBA), Trade Fair Complex also expressed that the market is tired of concession regime.
“We have different reasons for staging the protest. We have 13 different markets here. Now we are not against the government concession policy but what we are praying for is that they should remove the stakeholder out of it.
We have developed the areas given to us. If they want to give out the other remaining areas, they can, but they should leave the area we are using alone. We have developed it. We are also praying they should give us the offer of first refusal, “he pleaded.
