Engineer Ganiu Johnson had been a versatile and experienced hand in the Lagos State Ministry of Works and Infrastructure.
It will be recalled that Ganiu Johnson was the Special Adviser on Works and Infrastructure to former governor Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, when Governor Rauf Aregbesola was the commissioner in the same ministry more than a decade ago.
Ganiu would later hold forth in the ministry during the first tenure of former governor Babatunde Raji Fashola in the state and supervised all the laudable projects of ex-governor Fashola in the Ministry.
He later served as SA in the same government and ministry, when Mr. Femi Hamzat was the commissioner for Works and Infrastructure.
With that, Ganiu Johnson became a force to reckon with in the Ministry and he practically knew everything about road and infrastructure projects in the state at the tip of his finger.
This continued until the incumbent Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of the state got to power.
According to informants, Ambode does not operate like his predecessors as he believes in directly handling projects, especially those that require huge sums of money like works and infrastructure.
With this, Johnson, as our sources said, became almost redundant and he was not allowed to know what was going on in the ministry as it relates projects unlike what used to obtain in the past.
Sources said that this infuriated him and he approached the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, that he would resign from the government, but Tinubu reportedly prevailed on him to drop the idea.
“Ganiu would have none of that. He told Ambode in the presence of Asiwaju Tinubu that ‘I am resigning from your government. I cannot allow a small boy like you to toss me up and down and stop from doing my job. I spent not less than N500 Million personally on your election. Where do you think I got the money from, when you are now blocking me from giving out contracts’. With that, Johnson dropped his resignation letter and left the government of Governor Ambode in January 2017 for good,” said our source.
The source added that most of the political big wigs in Lagos APC and top Lagosians had accused Governor Ambode of being power drunk and arrogant with the way he relates with them, which is the cause of the growing agitation for his replacement in 2019.
“Gov Ambode’s main problem is that he feels he doesn’t owe anybody anything as long as he is satisfying Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. That is why he is fighting everybody around Tinubu and getting away with it. But he should realize that this is politics, and you must be magnanimous enough to carry all interests along,’ the source opined.
