On August 3 2020, my father died at Lagos State University Teaching Hospital Ikeja and it was one week of torture and exploitation.

First of all, the Intensive Care Unit of the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital was non functional, so we had to settle for a private facility called CCU(Critical Care Unit) on the premises of LASUTH. it came at a cost of Seven Hundred Thousand Naira for every 3 nights. He was there for one week. Need I say the slow nature he was attended to made him slide into Coma. He never came out of it.

Everyone knows, safe to assume any sensible person knows timely treatment increases the survival rate of Stroke. Well it was not so.

Every test cannot be carried out at the Hematology department of LASUTH, it has to be BT technologies.

You go to the Hematology department, they will tell you result will be out in 5 days, while consultant will tell you that he needs the result before he can commence treatment. I’m still wondering while the delay in carrying out life saving procedure to draining relatives mentally, emotionally and financially. A topic for another day.

BT Technologies will be able to do the tests within hours at an obscenely high price.

Mind you, the CCU now goes for N750k for every 3 nights.

I am voting against a Lagos where people are exploited just to get proper Medicare.

I am voting against a Lagos where the State Government makes touts enforcers of government policies and orders. Recently, touts were strongly on ground with state government officials at Igbogbo to carry out a demolition order without prior notice and touts even prevented residents from salvaging a thing from their buildings.

I am voting against a Lagos where I cannot be a beneficiary of many housing schemes centrally located across the state, I’m only good for estates around Igando, Badagry and Igbogbo-Bayeku. A state with no mortgage plan.

I’m voting against a Lagos where a tout working with the Task Force of the State Government poured petrol on a commercial bus driver at Oshodi and burnt him to death in his bus. That was in 2022.

I am voting against a Lagos where touts are so brazen to harass bus conductors to their death. I was at Ketu when one dragged a conductor to his death in a bid to collect money for security and LASTMA. This was just in February 2023.

I’m voting against a Lagos where the Governor found time to be at a Book Launch and birthday party of Chief Bisi Akande 24hours after some students of Ojodu Grammar School were crushed to death by an articulated truck, shot at by Policemen(no death recorded), and 48hrs later was at a cooking festival with White Money, smiling like someone high on very cheap substance.

I am voting against a Lagos where the governor and those in government do not have dignity for lives of Lagosians. A governor and his cabinet dancing to Wasiu Ayinde, the same day Bamishe’s corpse was identified. Bamishe that went missing on a BRT bus and the government kept mute for a week till her body was found. The state government couldn’t even get the Lagos state Hospital Management Board to waive the charges for keeping the body in the morgue or even pay for it, her family had to pay.

I am voting against a Lagos where touts were conveyed with BRT buses to attack peaceful #EndSARS protesters at Alausa. Even when one of the touts “Osha” was identified, nothing happened to him, rather protesters are languishing in jail till date.

I am voting against a Lagos where the Governor will point the military contingent to Lekki, while the seat of power in the state was under occupation. A state where the governor hurriedly declared a curfew. A state where the Governor in collusion with the advertising agency turned off the billboard and other source of light, and removed surveillance cameras.

I am voting against a Lagos where the government shamelessly and “satanically” tried to discredit and reject the White Paper of the Panel it instituted after the shooting of October 20 2020 at Lekki toll gate.

This is the Lagos I am voting against!

You might have your reason for voting for this Lagos.. but this wasn’t the Lagos I grew up in….

Deyemi Saka