Dele Sobowale, Jide Ajani, Adeleke Adeseri And Olasunkanmi Akoni
19 May 2008
Lagos — His mien is a cross between a smile and a grin. And that is actually what he appears to represent. At informal sessions, Babatunde Raji Fashola is an unmistakably playful, even considered 'loose', and very jovial person. But shift the focus to a formal session, and you're confronted with a near-fanatical stickler for time, precision, accuracy, appropriateness and what ever makes for a thorough job. That was his trademark as Bola Ahmed Tinubu's Chief of Staff.
Today,as Lagos State governor, Fashola has raised the stakes.
If staff in the Lagos State governor's office thought Fashola was a workaholic during Tinubu's tenure, they now have an even sterner overseer in the incumbent.
Governor Raji Fashola
In this interview session with Vanguard's Dele Sobowale, Jide Ajani, Adeleke Adeseri and Olasunkanmi Akoni, Governor Fashola explains why Lagosians have to bear with his administration in the face of what may today look like excruciating pains of a re-development scheme.
But he was quick to declare that at the end of the day, Lagos would become a wonderful city, and Lagosians a much happier people.
The passion was self-evident, the commitment, unrivaled.
The snag in the session was that it had to come to an abrupt end - the appointments he had to keep that day were such that extending the interview session one way or another might serve a dysfunctional end. Excerpts:
It has been observed that most of your activities in the last one year have either been patterned after or are a continuation of the recommendations of the transition committees set up by your predecessor in 1999.
It is true. When the transition committee was set up in 1999, I was privileged to be part of it. I served under Alhaji Femi Okunnu, who was the chairman. I was in the Land Sub committee where I also served as secretary. From the various reports of about forty committees, the Lagos state government synthesised the reports. That was how we arrived at the ten point agenda. Under that, we have sub sectors on the global economy. We have transportation, health care, sustainable development, education, revenue generation, housing, poverty alleviation, agriculture and so many other topical areas.
One of these things that I mentioned has parallel twins in the Millennium Development Goals. I was part of the team and I believe in what we did. That is why I did not dismantle it. I knew we were doing the right thing. We identified the problems. That is why I am continuing with them. You know these areas are very important to our existence as a people.
The last administration had taken steps to implement them. Continuity is an important aspect of the life of a nation and a state. That is why our economic summit this year did not focus on problems, rather we were looking for how best to solve the problems. The caliber of people who attended the summit attests to this. This people have relevant experiences to show us.
We had someone from Singapore, who started the urban housing policy of Singapore in 1964. And it has enabled over 80 percent of people in Singapore to own homes. We also had Rice Penalosa, the Mayor of Bogotá, who began to turn around all the slums in Bogotá.
We had Dr Hanado Beshitu, from Lima, Peru
The thesis is that only a small fraction of any society, especially in the capital world was benefiting from the resources. And this was simply because they could not enter into the formal economy at the bottom of the pyramid where they have a large number of people. And the way to do this is to bring the artisans, traders and others together to be able to exchange ideas and transaction in a formal currency of exchange, which is documentation.
Does that in any way tie to the mortgage scheme which is on and which would enable citizens to have a form of documentation and ...
Yes. This is why we are implementing mortgage scheme. It is not only for home ownership, it also involves ownership of shops in our market places. This will enable us to do what is done in other economies. This will allow the economy to open up and encourage invisible trade in currency that every body can identify. Paper work and documentation will be part of it. Once you bring the documentation, we will know that it is an acceptable instrument.
Its like shares as a vehicle for transaction. The way he described it in his opening remarks attests to this. He said, someone wants to identify you, to grant you an entry permit and he says who are you? And you say my name is this, my mother's name is this and he says I don't know that.
But immediately you produce a passport which is an international document of entry and exit known every where, you will be identified. What we are therefore doing is continuing and sharing best practices to be the best in what we are doing. This will re-enforce what we are doing. It will also ensure that we don't veer off from our target. We will learn from their mistakes and gain from their success. And improve our style.
You mentioned Peru, Singapore and Colombia. And I am happy you talked about the start off time. Today, mercifully, things have changed. But then based your comparisons of these economies, I think they have their peculiar manner of evolution. It's seemingly different from what we have in Nigeria, an environment where people are so impatient to get things done, and by so doing illegalities are allowed to take place. How have you been able to marry the hue and cry elicited by what you are doing, with where you are going to?
Our attitude is that we do not recognise that what we are doing is impossible, hence its been done elsewhere. We promised Lagosians that they would not find us wanting in any thing. And we will continue to do our very best for them. Our responsibility as people entrusted with office is to lead people to a place where we are convinced within our knowledge that is beneficial to them and it will also be beneficial to the common cause.
The choice we have is to do nothing, and that will be a very grave one with dire consequences. That is why we are changing the face of Lagos. I can tell you that a country like Singapore faced this kind of problem when they started their housing policy. The very first chapter of a book that was produced on it, showed when the bulldozers came and it showed a noodle seller who said it is over his dead body that his shop would be demolished.
But today they are not only enjoying the dividends, they are thankful that it happened. The most important thing is to earn the trust of the people. And to make them understand that we do it in their interest. The fact that we are not taking their properties and appropriating it for personal use will give some confidence. And that is why we are not doing every thing at the same time.
We have to demonstrate that it works. We did not create this problem, we inherited most of them. If it wasn't done when we were three million people, it will be more difficult to do it now. But we are succeeding.
If we don't do any thing, we will have twenty five million people who need that service, but could not get it because of inability to do it. And life will become more difficult. If a road needs to be fixed when you have hundred cars and you failed, when it starts taking three hundred cars, it will be more difficult to do. If you still refuse to do it because of pains that will trail it, when you now have one thousand cars, the road will not be available.
We had this experience when we were doing Lekki/Ekpe Expressway and Ozurumba Nbadiwe. Everyday I complain to the contractor based on the phone calls I was getting. I almost concluded that the contractor was not working. But he explained the difficulties to me. He said at least 50 to 80,000 thousand cars ply this road every day. He explained that he can not close the road. He however demanded that if given the authority to close the road, he will finish it within three months. But people must move around. And that was why we worked at night.
We did the same thing on Ikorodu bridge. the bridge was threatening to collapse and we didn"t want it to fall. That is why we puled it down without delay. There was nothing that was not said about it. And today they have a safer bridge. It was a discomfort of four months. This is our responsibility. And that is why we are doing it.
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