LAGOS State governor, Mr Akinwunmi Ambode, has urged political office-holders to put the interest of the people first and strive to fulfil the contract signed with citizens during electioneering, saying doing otherwise would amount to displeasing God.
Governor Ambode gave the charge, recently, in Lagos at the 10th Hijrah lecture of the state House of Assembly with the theme, “The Race for Paradise”.
The governor said it was imperative for those occupying public offices to see their positions as a privilege because the electorate could have chosen other persons to represent them.
“There is no better time to give back to those who are in need than now and to fulfil the contract we made between ourselves and our Maker. We must fulfil the contract we made with the people before they elected us. They could have elected other people but they put us there.
“We must always put the interest of the people first. We should be selfless. There should be that selflessness in our practice of religion and in our offices”, the governor said.
He also urged residents to be good and just in all their dealings as a people on a race to paradise.
The governor, who described a lecture delivered by Professor Afis Oladosu of the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies, University of Ibadan on the subject as fundamental and fruitful, commended the leadership of the Assembly for organising the lecture.
Noting that the lecture was apt, Ambode said it came barely two weeks after the state government had an inter-religious parley.
Earlier, the Speaker of the House of Assembly, Honourable Mudashiru Obasa, said the lecture was meant to reawaken the consciousness of the people about the existence of God, people’s obligation to the Supreme Being and to fellow humans, as well as the need to re-examine preparation for paradise.
The lecture had in attendance hundreds of Muslim faithful, members of the Assembly, government functionaries, among others.