The Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Raji Fashola, has denied promising that the All Progressives Congress (APC) will fix power supply issues in six months in 2015.
It would be recalled that reports claimed the former Lagos State governor had, in the lead-up to the 2015 election, promised the APC would fix Nigeria’s power challenge in six months if voted in.
The reports had also claimed that Fashola asked Nigerians to “stone” him if the promise was not kept.
Speaking on Channels Television’s election show The 2023 Verdict on Monday, Fashola denied making such a statement, describing it as a “lie that I allowed.”
He said: “One of the things that were said about me was that I said we would electrify Nigeria in six months.
“It was a lie that I allowed to run until the day I asked my media men to play the tape back, and since then, that lie has gone.”
“I know that in the way I speak, I don’t use words like stone. I am not even a violent person. Stone is violence. I don’t use those kinds of words. They are not part of my vocabulary,” he added.
However, on the naira redesign policy, Fashola urged the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to review their plans if they are not producing the right results.
His words: “I empathise with those challenges, but some of them are the result of policy, and it is the responsibility of public servants, especially those responsible for those policies, to look back and say, ‘Did we intend to cause this pain?’
“And if the policy is not working, perhaps you have to readjust and also ask yourself whether you thought this through. As a public officer, before and now, I have had cause to reverse myself when I saw that my policies were causing unintended results.”