THE Special Adviser on Information and Strategy to President Bola Tinubu, Bayo Onanuga, on Wednesday, January 24, said the President had no plan to move Nigeria’s capital to Lagos State.
Onanuga disclosed this in a series of posts on his X account.
He said those spreading information on the purported relocation were dishonest, attempting to gain attention to themselves as champions of their ethnicity or region.
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He noted that those behind the “deceptive campaign” knew they were pitting the North against the South through risky tactics.
He argued that because the Constitution supports Abuja, the capital would remain the Federal Capital Territory (Abuja).
Claims of the capital moving to Lagos came after the Federal Government announced the relocation of the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) headquarters and some departments of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to Lagos State.
Onanuga maintained that political influence should not be applied to administrative choices in his rebuttal of the Nigerian capital relocation claims.
“President Tinubu has no plan to move the Federal Capital to Lagos. The rumour first surfaced during the campaign last year by opponents looking for all manners of weapons to stop him. We trashed it,” Onanuga stated.
According to him, FAAN headquarters and CBN’s departments relocation to Lagos does not translate to relocation of Nigeria’s capital to Lagos.
“FAAN should be nowhere else but near the industry it regulates. FAAN will still maintain some presence in Abuja, as it is not a wholesale movement.
“Similarly, the movement of some departments of the CBN to Lagos should not trigger any hoopla. The departments concerned, including the bank supervision department, are those dealing with commercial banks, all with headquarters in Lagos. A regulator ought to be close to the businesses it regulates, ” Onanuga stated.
He said many parastatals were based outside Abuja, depending on their mandate.
“NIMASA is in Lagos. So is NPA. The National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) is in Lokoja, not Abuja. Will the people opposing the movement of FAAN and some CBN departments want those agencies to be in Abuja, where there is no single port and no maritime activity?” he asked.
He cautioned against politicisation of administrative decisions and spreading false information.
A reporter with the ICIR
A Journalist with a niche for quality and a promoter of good governance