5 November 2007
interview
Lagos — What kind of person would willingly want to govern a state like Lagos, with its teaming population and myriad challenges? Someone really passionate about it or just someone who rather enjoys inflicting pain on himself? At the helm of affairs in Lagos since May 29, is Governor Babatunde Fashola, SAN. FUNKE ABOYADE sought to find out more about the man who is pulling out all stops and taking his plans for Lagos Mega city to the world stage. The recent annual conference of the International Bar Association in Singapore provided the perfect opportunity
The time is 8.45pm and I'm ensconced in a rather comfortable sofa in the expansive lobby of The Regent on Orchard Boulevard, Singapore. Moji Rhodes, the Governor's aide, has gone to fetch him.
It takes a moment and I blink to make sure it's Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, Governor of Lagos State, I'm looking at amongst a small group just emerging from the hotel elevator. A tall, dark, bespectacled young man in jeans and a black T-shirt breaks out from the group and strides purposefully towards my direction as I struggle to my tired feet trying furiously to figure out how best to address him, given that I will spend the next three to four hours in his company. I'm stumped. I settle for, 'Hello Governor Fashola' and a handshake but the Eko o ni baje o exponent is having none of that as he gives me a warm hug and admonishes, 'Funke, let down your hair, and I mean that!' He pauses, 'I can see it's down already anyway!' referring to my free swinging braids.
This will be my third encounter with him and the first full one, having met him briefly three weeks earlier when I'd walked up to introduce myself at the Clinton Global initiative in New York. Then, just 24 hours earlier, at Singapore's Suntec Convention Centre, after the opening ceremony of the International Bar Association's Annual Conference and welcome party at the city state's famous The Raffles Hotel. He'd patiently posed and smiled as excited Nigerian delegates took photographs with him in turn, never once complaining or showing any sign of impatience. No attitude, nothing; on the other hand, quite friendly and down to earth. I'd remarked this observation to my friend Oyinkan then. We'd both concluded he must be very gracious indeed.
Moji joins us as does Nike Animashaun, the Director of Lands at the Lagos State Lands Registry, and we're good to go. The rest of the group go their separate ways.
We get in the limo already waiting at the hotel entrance. We are going to experience Singapore's Night Safari, touted as the world's first Night Safari.
Fashola, I discover, is a man who's very much interested in his environment and animal life generally.
'Yes, I've always done. And I keep a kennel of dogs.'
Another dog lover. I idly wonder why many of the lawyers I've profiled in Away From the Wig & Gown seem to love dogs so much; Mofe Atake (One SAN and His Dogs, 2001); Dayo Adekola (Lawyer By Day, Musician By Night, December 2006); and more recently Leke Alder (The Lawyer as Brand Consultant, October 2007). Each keeps enough of the canine mammals to populate a zoo! There must be something about male lawyers and dogs; it'll be worth a story when I put my finger on it.
'I used to be a very, very frequent visitor to Biney Zoo, in Yaba' continues Fashola, 'Yeah, you're surprised? It existed around the time I was in Secondary School, up till 1978, before I did my A levels. They had apes, baboons, snakes all sorts of rare birds and quite a number of species of wild animals, hyenas and even crocodiles.
'I think the zoo was somebody's initiative in a small premises of about, if I remember the dimensions, two private properties; but it was open to the public, we used to pay to go in. If you went to any school around Yaba it was a popular zoo for a lot of students then', he recalls
'I liked to catch bats by hand' adds the animal lover.
I'm trying hard not to be grossed out. Bats! By hand! A joke, surely?
No, not a joke.
'There were many then at the St. Mary's, at CMS. We could also watch them from Kings College' he says.
Well, good for him.
'I'm interested in animals generally; I watch programmes like Animal Planet on Discovery Channel'.
He recalls regretfully that when he visited the University of Ibadan Zoo in 1986, 'it was a shadow of itself'.
I ask if Haruna the famous Gorilla was still there then.
We pause occasionally to admire the night time skyline of the amazing city state, aptly dubbed by its proud inhabitants, Uniquely Singapore.
Some 30 minutes later, we arrive the Night Safari. Occupying some 40 hectares of secondary jungle, it's billed to 'unfold the mystery and drama of the tropical jungle after dusk with stunning effects'.
Moji disappears to get us tickets and resurfaces a short while later. We are ready to see the 'myriad of nocturnal animals, from fierce predators to timid forest dwellers, in their natural habitat under subtle moonglow lighting'.
As we stroll in a leisurely fashion to the tram, I take the Governor up on mass transportation, critical for a megacity like Lagos.
'It's not as daunting as you think' he smiles confidently, explaining that his government will explore rail, road and water transportation.
'Water transportation is our natural highway in Lagos. Some work had been done before my government. Out of 28 routes, seven have been identified which can be rapidly developed and we've taken three.'
He points out that the Lagos State government is also investing in infrastructure to support water transportation - jetties, dredging of waterways, efficient and modern embarkation and disembarkation structures, providing navigational aids. 'I won't compromise safety' he's emphatic.
At the tram stop the ladies decide to have some ice cream. I settle for the chocolate chip cookie and caramel flavour. The Governor and I continue our discussion whilst Nike and Moji converse nearby in low tones.
How does he intend to plan adequately for the megacity given that the last census figures, though hotly disputed by the Lagos State government, hardly indicate a city on the verge of exploding? A mere population figure of some 8 or 9 million as I recall, less than even Kano.
'The figures that I gave you, 17.875 million, are empirically demonstrable by us based on material documentation of the national population census which they shared with us. It's a figure on which we need to plan and it's the figure upon which our budget will be based. That's the realistic figure! It's the figure that makes sense because it is a state that is offering free education - about the only state that's doing so to my knowledge - that's offering free treatment of malaria to children under 12 and to people 60 above, free anti-natal care for pregnant women. And that state is surrounded by people in dire need in other states where it doesn't exist. And where there's poverty, there's no health insurance ', he let's the sentence hang as I absorb the import and quickly seize the opportunity to savour more of my ice cream.
'And unless we deliberately intend to fake the figures the sensible thing, in my view, to do and our people will be better off really, is if we plan for the worst and hope for the best.'
The Governor speaks animatedly, fervently. Clearly, governing the state is a job he's passionate about. I find his enthusiasm, his can do will do spirit almost infectious, so much so I actually forget about the divine ice cream perched precariously on my laps.
'We are on course, we are committed to remaining methodical, to finding solutions to the problems that have confronted so many governments in Lagos because that's the only way we think we can add value, by employing enduring management solutions to them rather than for political benefit and political gain, only for us to see them eroded shortly after.
'We've told ourselves that everything that we do today we will benefit positively or adversely from. If we build good roads we will leave office to come and meet them, if we build bad roads they will be waiting for us when we leave office. If we build good roads, our children will inherit good roads; if we build very efficient public utilities we will inherit very efficient public utilities.
'Having been in government for the period I was then, I've seen so many people who write to us, my predecessors, suggesting things that should be done. With the greatest respect to all of that, and I say this without any sense of judgment but rather by a sense of opportunity that I now have, that I do not want to wait till after I've left office to start pointing out roads, schools, hospitals or so many other things that should have been fixed. I want to be in a position to say that within the time that was available to me to work and within the resources that I had that I did something.'
By now, the tram has come and gone but we're so engrossed in our talk that we decide we can wait for the next one. Moji asks if I'd like another ice cream. I decline regretfully; it would after all, do nothing for my waistline.
'Singapore is a city state and you're planning for a Lagos mega city. Are you here to take any lessons away or study anything in particular? I'm sure you're not here solely for the IBA' I ask.
'Yes, my presence here is for so many reasons and it is indeed somewhat fortuitous, because about three years ago I laid my hands on Lee Kuan Yew's book, From First World to Third; he's the accredited father of modern Singapore, Minister Mentor they call him now. And I see significant similarities in the problems that he faced as a leader, the forthrightness with which he attacked them, the honesty and integrity of purpose in government and the quality of people he surrounded himself with, the strict application of the rule of law, the many law cases he fought any time his integrity was impugned or that of members of his cabinet.
'As Chief of Staff, he said so many things burning in me. Interestingly, there was a chapter in that book titled, Greening Singapore, which in itself was instructive. It's a description of the greening project that I've embarked upon in Lagos State from the time of my reading of that chapter.
'Last year, I was registered to attend the IBA conference in Chicago; I couldn't go because of the elections. But this year, with the conference in Singapore, it gives me an opportunity to come and see what I'd read in the book. It also gives me an opportunity to continue my filial liaison with my Association because I'm still very, very passionate about law practice. It's difficult to walk away from what I did almost every day for 14 years of my life before I went into public service and I hope one day to go back to it when I finish this assignment. I have a lot of unfinished business there, but I see it as a privilege to also operate in this very larger theatre of life.
'So, you're right in many respects that the IBA was not the only reason, but it was a major reason. The more fundamental reason was to come and see the greening project and incidentally today I've seen more than the greening project, I've met with the Singaporean Water Resources Board; I met their Minister for the Environment and Water Resources. And today, interestingly, I concluded two transactions and shared their experiences about converting used water into new water, reusable and renewable as I saw. Domestic water for washing dishes, for flushing, for bathing, is collected in a huge reservoir, put through the highest quality for purification and ultraviolet disinfection and sent back into the system for use - for domestic use and industrial purposes. I actually drank a bottle of it at the plant.'
'Yuk! You drank a bottle?" I burst out laughing and he joins in.
'I drank it this morning, Clean water!'
I offer these pearls of wisdom, 'If you're still OK 24 hours after, then I'm sure you'll be fine'. He laughs.
The greening project is not to be sniffed at; earlier in the day, a taxi driver informs me that any time he's feeling a bit down, all he has to do is look at the trees and greenery as he drives along and he feels very happy and lifted in spirit, as do many Singaporeans. It's heartening that Governor Fashola is thinking about the little things, as well as the big. Even though Singapore is forced to have many high rise building because of space constraints and a high population density, in the midst of the glass and steel everywhere one turns there's lots of greenery, all picture perfect, well manicured and maintained. Singapore is a beautiful country, and it's not for nothing that it maintains its unassailable position as the cleanest country in the world.
The Governor also discloses that whilst in Singapore he will hold meetings geared towards help in building the proposed Epe water supply plant which is expected to deliver 74m gallons of water to Lagos and which they're hoping to finance through public private partnership.
With his term being for four years, possibly another four if re-elected, has he found willing partners? And supposing his successor is hesitant to pursue the PPP after the change of regime?
'Well, it is impossible to discount that from their thinking, but I think what is important is to attain a measure of stability, first for Nigeria and also for Lagos. In the Lagos project the defining issue is the record of transparency, good governance and credibility that we build from today through the four year term that we have, and the institutionalisation of it. That is what will keep the interest alive, rather than the personality in government. And luckily, I was part of the development of the PPP infrastructure for Lagos State under my predecessor; we have a law in place which is an attempt to institutionalise it. We agreed the best model in sub-Saharan Africa with the Lekki-Epe expressway which is a key project to be done by consensus. Very soon, we will be starting the Eko Atlantic City, we will build a new city on the water front in Bar Beach through a Public Private Partnership. In fact, the more of these projects that get up and going now, the more it becomes a settled practice in Lagos, and in spite of whatever may be happening around Nigeria, Lagos can define its own survival strategy as it has done over the years.'
I'm intrigued, 'Similar to what Singapore did?'
'Singapore experience is a national experience, but there are these underlying principles of good governance, law and order, respect for rule of law which we have adopted even before my visit here but which is reinforced now by this visit'.
I get up to drop off my empty ice cream tub in a nearby trash can. 'Won ma nfun won l'egba ni bi bai ni o!' I remark, referring to Singapore's strict environment laws which stipulate caning, fines and jail time for infringements such as litter.
We make tracks for the tram, show our tickets and board. The Safari has begun.
Almost every jungle specie is represented; over 1,200 animals from some 110 species. From flamingoes to marsh birds whose male breast feed their young to vultures to the black crown knight herons. The otter, wolf, the rhino which weighs in at a hefty 2,500kg when fully grown but which can still move at speeds reaching 40km/hr, the spotted dear, the Malaysian Tiger now an endangered specie with just 600 left in Malaysia. Three tigers go into making just one fur coat.
And there's the Asian Tiger which is grooming itself as the tram goes by. It spends up to 20 hours a day fast asleep and the rest of its waking hours looking good. Talk about a lazy, vain and self centred male specie! Whoever said women are vain obviously never came across an Asian male tiger!
We pass by Chawang the bull which appears to be swinging his head from side to side, dancing to imaginary music. This movement apparently aids digestion. The tour guide who obviously has a great sense of humour adds that Chawang must be dancing to the iPod it received last Christmas. He consumes, we learn, 200kg of vegetation every day.
And then we see the water buck, the spotted hyena also called the laughing hyena and the African hippo, second only to the elephant in weight and which can open its mouth an amazing 150 degrees wide. Not good, if you're about to get swallowed by it
As we pass varied members of the deer specie, the Governor exclaims, 'Awon ogufe wa re!' as we all dissolve into peals of laughter. They might be delicacies in our part of the world, but here they are a tourist delight.
I take him up on the issue of tourism and ask just how committed his government is to tourism. They have after all just demolished the Lekki art market, popular with tourists and locals alike.
'The demolition doesn't lend itself to the conclusion that we don't care about tourism' he insists.
I persist, 'But what about the way it was done? After pulling down the buildings, not done the bulldozers sadistically crushed whatever art work that survived the initial demolition into smithereens'.
'First and foremost' he assures, 'We are here to serve the public and at tax payers' expense. Therefore, we act in the interest of the greatest good. The buildings were not approved. We must decode whether with a raw egg in our hand, we want to eat an omelette or keep the egg. It we'd like an omelette, the egg must be broken.'
What about reports that one of the art dealers slumped and died as a direct result of the shock of seeing her only means of livelihood destroyed?
'I care very much about human life and would do all I can to protect it. You are giving me all of these facts now; I will respond and investigate them. If true, it is quite unfortunate and I'm very sorry to hear about it.'
I'm relieved to hear that there was no seal of approval to the manner the demolition was carried out and that it will be investigated.
I'm rather nervous as we pass the lions. What if they jump into the tram?
Fashola laughs, 'I know for a fact they won't jump. Besides, there's a ditch separating the animals from the trams'.
The tram stops to let us out to continue on the leopard trail, a walking trail where we will be able to see the animals at closer quarters before re-joining the tram. As Moji, Nike and I are rather nervous about what we might encounter, we let the Governor take the lead whilst we follow timidly.
'To ba je pe jewellery lon ni k'ewa gba, e bo si wa ju!' (If you were told to come for jewellery, you'd be in front!) says Fashola over his shoulders as he makes fun of us.
'Yes o!' we reply unashamedly.
Pleading fatigue, we beg off having a closer look at whatever animals the night holds and return to the tram. No need to come all the way to Singapore only to get eaten by some wild animal!
I - wisely- refrain from letting the Governor know about the Mangrove Walk, one of the three walking trails in the park. There, huge bats about a foot long, the hugest in the world, swing about freely in trees and swoosh over visitors' heads. On a previous visit there with my children, we'd studiously avoided it, only able to watch in astonishment as other - more daring - visitors squealed with delight as the flying fox fruit bats swooshed merrily about them.
Seeing as our Governor here loves bats, mum's the word from me
We rejoin the tram and as there's a lull in the tour guide's voice and hearing other Nigerian accents we become aware that the family sitting directly behind us is Nigerian. We introduce ourselves. They are a Nigerian couple, Esan and Gift Edovbiye and their three children, based in Malaysia but in the Singapore for the Hari Raya (eid-el Fitri) long holiday weekend.
I ask why the reluctance by the Malaysian Embassy in Singapore to grant visas to Nigerians and am not surprised to learn that the activities of Nigerian 419ers and drug traffickers are to blame.
'The drug traffickers now use the Malaysian local girls as couriers and that makes the Malaysians very angry' Esan explains.
As the tram continues, we pass by a uniformed Safari employee whose job is to stand by the tracks, wave and smile a hello to visitors as the tram passes.
The Governor is impressed. 'That's a job, that's a job!' he says excitedly.
Earlier on, we'd been discussing employment creation from tourism opportunities and the menace of area boys in Lagos.
'I promised myself to visit the Kruger National Park someday. In all the parts of Nigeria where we have Reserves of wild life, we can borrow a lot from the managers of Kruger National Park and even from this Safari we're on now about the strategy for management. I think that is what has been missing', Fashola analyses.
'We have to take advantage of the many endowments that we have as a people, but the way to do that much more rapidly is to sustain an aggressive educational policy that focuses not necessarily on the kind of education that we received that prepared us only to be employed, but on an education that prepares us to create things for ourselves. As I say about the generation of my parents, we cannot blame them, none of them could have foretold that Nigeria would come to that so quickly and I think that they could only share what they experienced with us.'
He's glad that in today's different world, an IT world, people are beginning to think out of the box on job creation.
'As I said earlier, my visit here is also part of my own education about how best we respond to responsibilities that I now have as Governor.'
Speaking of employment creation, how does he plan to deal with the menace of area boys once and for all?
'I wouldn't take the once and for thing literally because the problem didn't start yesterday. It's a fallout of a sustained economic downturn, a sustained failure of certain building blocks that sustained our national economy. Some of the so-called area boys you see were the mechanics, the bricklayers, the carpenters that you and I used to know, the tailors who used to do 'freedom' or graduation by the corner street, learning a trade. All of that is gone! And we have succeeded over the last 25 or so years in creating an almost unemployable set of people because they are not skilled. And that is why if you look at construction sites today, furniture factories today, people from the West African coast are the ones who doing pop plastering and wood work in our homes, laying tiles for construction companies. Those are jobs that our people have abandoned because we did not reinforce the values that those jobs offered and we sit down and say, "unemployment and area boys".
'Ask yourself, what is the area boy doing? Trying to snatch your bag or your phone, because we have also exposed him to the culture of DSTV! He sees you well dressed, he has seen you carry a GSM, he watches Channel O and sees the lifestyle and he doesn't have the skills to earn the income, so he's going to come after you! That is why all of us who are privileged must look back and begin to give back. It is not just the Governor or the government, I'm one man! All of us must look back and give back to that society, if the investments we make in ourselves, if the investments we make in our businesses, if the investments we make in our children are to endure.
'Now, what we have done is that we're beginning to create jobs where none appeared to exist. I'll give you two examples. Watching football every Saturday in the premiership, I noticed that some people wear very luminous vests, to manage crowds - control and security. Being an avid footballer, one of the first things I did was use the opportunity to host two major football events to engage some of these area boys. We now have a directory for them, using them as crowd control agents, wearing violet T-shirts; we have their telephone numbers. At least we have kept them busy on an ad hoc basis. I am bringing back the Lagos Football Club, hoping to bring back life to the stadium.'
Fashola's government has embarked on planting trees and flowers across Lagos State. 'Under bridges and loops from Osbourne to Alapere I engage them now, learning how to plant trees, grass, flowers, how to cultivate nurseries. We have their home addresses for those who have, their phone numbers which many of them have and we teach them to do all of these things. They get paid on a daily basis, and I'm also taxing their wages and developing a data base. This has gone on for the last seven weeks. I get a weekly report and hopefully, I'm already trying now to set up a horticultural school.'
I take him up on safety and security issues in Lagos State. With the International Bar Association planning to hold one of its specialist conferences in Lagos in the third quarter of 2008, how prepared will Lagos be then to host the world?
'I think that every city will have its own synergy and challenges and it will be unfair for example to continue to isolate the challenges that Lagos faces in terms of security, refuse management and all of those issues, without looking at them in a global manner in the Nigerian context. In Singapore you have a land area of about 750sq m which is about one quarter the size of Lagos; you have 4.5m people in Singapore, Lagos has about four and a half times that population.
'When you're talking about security challenges of Lagos you must look at it in terms of the fact that Lagos has become the oasis of hope in a rapidly dissipated national economy, with 85% of banking business, more than 50% of commercial activities, manufacturing and all of that. When you look at all of the states that neighbour Lagos, quite a number of their people stay in Lagos, do their business in Lagos and sometimes go back home and in that sense I think we will get a fair statistical data of how badly or how well we are doing. And I think that when we do that, with 18 million people we are doing quite well, we can do a lot better and with the commitment that we have made, I think we will'.
And our inadequacies?
'I don't see it as inadequacies' he insists
Do we invite the world to come and witness our shortcomings then?
'In all of that, there is an energy in Lagos, there a beauty, a warmth in Lagos that you won't find in so many other international cities. And if we invite people who were cynical about coming to Lagos, that is the only way they can feel and experience Lagos, rather from presentations that we send across the world on laptops and e-mail.
'In New York (at the THISDAY summit, September 24) I was explaining to people that the crime situation that we have all over Nigeria principally depends on the situation in Lagos, since it is national. But Lagos must of necessity become pronounced because it is bed rock of the Nigerian economy, and that's the way to look at it. What we have are commercial crimes, poverty, a national economic downturn that has seen everybody run into the narrow funnel that is Lagos.
'And even based on ideology, terrorism, and in spite of the fact that people were burnt in the underbelly of the UK in 7/7, people were burnt in the twin towers in 9/11, everybody still goes to New York and London. And every time you and I fly to NY or London, we stand the risk of being caught in the vortex of an ideological crime for which we have no responsibility or blame. The plane can actually explode midair!'
I'm beginning to see things his way that maybe, just maybe, the situation is not so bleak and gloomy after all, 'So in other words you're comfortable with asking the world to come to Lagos?'
'Extremely so! And I think that bringing them there will make them understand some of the challenges we face. The world has become a global village and the comfort and progress of Lagos is a major progress not only for Nigeria but for the African Continent. If our development partners who have walked this road before come round and experience our problems, they'll even be more committed and more understanding of our problems because they can experience it and feel it with us.'
The tram comes to a stop and the Safari is at an end. We have gone, in the course of the evening, through eight world geographic zones - from African Savannah to South East Asian rain forest to South American jungle to the jungles of Burma, the Nepalese River Valley and more. We disembark and together with the Edovbiyes browse through the souvenir shops located strategically on the way out.
The Governor is evidently exited about developing the tourism potentials of Lagos, especially with the attendant jobs which are bound to be created from it. As we look around, he reels them off, 'Arts and craft, refreshments, ticket sales; it's a whole economy sub-sector on its own!'
As we make to go the Governor notices I haven't bought anything and insists I pick up anything I want. I settle for some fridge magnets even as I idly wonder where I'll find the space for them on my fridge which has quite enough magnets. Ah well, a couple more won't hurt I reckon.
We part ways with Esan, Gift and their children.
A few minutes before midnight, we head back for The Regent, tired but elated. Babatunde Raji Fashola, Senior Advocate of Nigeria, bows his head and seems to be lost in reverie. Just as I'm thinking he must have fallen asleep he springs a surprise and says softly but clearly into the night, 'Babatunde pele ojare! Okunrin l'on kesi!'
Whatever one may make of this passionate lover of Lagos State, articulate and determined visioner and lest we forget, keeper of dogs and lover of bats, he's clearly a man who knows who he is, where he's coming from and where he's headed
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