Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai on Thursday said the destruction he saw in Lagos during the EndSARS protest moved him to tears.
He praised his Lagos State counterpart, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, for quickly stopping the protest as it degenerated into violence.
El-Rufai spoke in Lagos when he visited Sanwo-Olu to empathise with him on the mayhem that occurred in the state during the protest against police brutality.
The Kaduna governor said those who thrived by violence infiltrated the hitherto peaceful protest to achieve their agenda of causing large-scale destruction on public and private assets in the state.
He said: “I have spent time to see some of the pictures of the destruction done on public properties in Lagos and I nearly shed tears. Anyone who cares about development and progress will cry after seeing what has been done to public facilities and people’s investments that provided jobs to youths.
“While expressing anger on police brutality may be right, but destroying public properties, which will have to be rebuilt by using money that is needed to invest in other public infrastructure, under the guise of protest, is nothing but self-destruction.
“The Lagos and the Federal governments will have to re-invest scarce resources that could have been used for other things to rebuild the vandalised facilities.”
Also, Sanwo-Olu has advised fellow state chief executives to avoid unnecessary spending so that they could have more resources to meet the basic needs of the people.
Sanwo-Olu spoke on Thursday at the 22nd annual Tax Conference of the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (CITN) at Eko Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos.
The governor stressed the need for better utilisation of tax payers’ money by public office holders to build the trust of the citizens.
He said fellow governors need to work for a better reform process.
Sanwo-Olu, who claimed that he had not bought any new vehicle for himself since he assumed office on May 29, 2019, said it is not fanciful that governors must buy brand new vehicles when there is no need for such.
“We need to look at our expenditure profile as Chief Executives of our states and ask ourselves: where can I cut the red tape? What can I do away with so as to increase the revenue of my state or even make available more money for my state?
“What I have done till date is that I have not purchased any single official vehicle for myself, for any of my personal staff or any of my family members from the government purse. If you see me have a convoy of 10 vehicles, these are all vehicles I was using during my campaigns.
“Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai joined me in one of my cars this morning and I can tell you that vehicle was one of the vehicles I used for my campaign; it is not brand new.
“So, I said to my people that it is not a fanciful thing that every governor must begin to buy brand new vehicles when you do not need to. So, all of those millions have gone back into the treasury of the state and we are using it to develop the state very well.”

By Oziegbe Okoeki