The Labour Party has accused the Lagos State Government of making it difficult for it to paste the posters of its presidential candidate, Peter Obi in the state.
The party’s National Publicity Secretary, Abayomi Arabambi, said many people and supporters of their party had been asking why Obi’s posters were not in Lagos, but he alleged that the state government had given orders to advertising practitioners to find ways of frustrating the party.
He said, “We met a brick wall with most of these private advert practitioners. They said if they (government) sees anything belonging to the Labour Party they will ban their sites. For the advertising practitioners, projects that they will take 250,000 for, they will bill us N3m and when you bring the money, they will tell you ‘they have warned us not to take it.’
“How do you threaten private advertising practitioners? Unfortunately, they (advert practitioners) don’t want to risk it because they pay money to the government so that they can continue to do business. If they see the Labour Party there (on the billboards) their licence may be revoked.
The Head of Corporate Affairs and Public Relations, Lagos State Signage and Advertisement Agency, Temitope Akande, said billboard points across the states had been leased to private companies.
He stated, “When it comes to billboards, we have given permits to those who run it as a business, we expect them to do their obligations as agencies.
“They (political parties) won’t come to us for the use of billboards because what we control is the structure, not the content. The content is controlled by APCON and the negotiation to use billboard sited anywhere is between the clients and the agency.
“They should go and meet companies and discuss terms and conditions for using their platform. Ours is that they (advertising companies) meet the agreed terms they have with LASAA on the service fees. They have approval for three years but they pay their yearly rent.”
On the issue of pasting posters, he said, “We told them (political parties) to come and register with us but they have refused to come. They keep pasting posters around to litter everywhere and when we begin cleaning up, they will say we are not allowing them to paste posters, but they have refused to come to regularise their posters.
“To regularise their posters, they need to write to us formally, inform us where they intend to deploy their posters and we will define where they can put it so that other political parties can have their share of the space dimension, location, number of the poster per pasting.”
The state Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Gbenga Omotoso, described as untrue claims that it restricted other parties from pasting posters. He spoke with Saturday Punch.
He said, “The little I know is that the state is against the indiscriminate pasting of posters to deface the state, which I think is not good. But as a government, we have not said people should not do whatever they want to do that is legal for them to sell their candidate.
“So, anybody who thinks that the state government as an institution will go out and begin to remove people’s posters is preposterous, absurd and not reasonable at all.”(PUNCH)
