In this session with Lagos State governor, Babatunde Raji
Fashola, he explains the style of administration that has been put in
place in the state such that successive governments can build and
improve on what has been achieved so far. He also takes a swipe at
President Goodluck Jonathan and his aides who say no administration in the history of Nigeria has done as much as theirs. You will find him as interesting as ever, with views that are unique both in thought and presentation. Excerpts:
Lagos
has been experiencing some urban renewal. Is this renewal an attempt at
taking Lagos back to some forgotten development plan, or a haphazard
work in progress?
If you follow our communication on
policy statement closely, you will notice that I said from the
beginning of my tenure that this was going to be a government of method;
that we are going to be methodical in things that we will embark upon.
Everything that we have done so far had been based on very rigorous
examination of what the problems are, what the choices of solutions are
and how to prioritise in order to make them sustainable. One of the
first things we did after assumption of office was to conduct a trip
round the state; I commissioned a team based on this to go and ask the
citizens and residents around the state to specifically tell the
governor, ‘what do you want him to do for you?’
That was the
beginning of our local government tour. The results that came showed us
that there were six main items: roads, drainages, schools, health, jobs
and power. But we wanted to validate that and we went for town hall
meetings in every local government. And while those things resonated
across, they resonated differently. In some local governments, they
wanted roads first. In others, they preferred schools. In some places,
their drainages were their main concern. This formed the basis of our
first full year budget in office (2008 budget). And we have kept faith
with this approach.
Indeed, from each tour after we came back, it
was to give instructions to each ministry or department. When we came
back from those tours, we went straight into an executive meeting
everyday giving out assignments as required; and we have kept track.
Regional plan
The second point was that of regional plan. I think the last regional
plan for the state was done around 1991 or so. So, we decided to plan
the state into eight towns. We developed a new regional plan. These
towns are Badagry, Ikorodu, Epe, Lagos Mainland (which covers part of
Oshodi, all through to Orile, to National Theater and Iddo), Ikoyi,
Victoria Island, Lekki and Ikeja; and to link them up by transport
infrastructures.
Again, we did an audit of the available water
supply. And we saw that we had about roughly 45 or 48 percent water
supply and we developed a plan; a short, medium and long term plan to
provide water for the growing population that we were anticipating. The
short-term plan was to do two million gallons per day, with facilities
in 15 locations. I have commissioned about nine of them. And along with
that short term plan was to get the Iju water works to run at full
capacity because it was running at about 35 percent capacity because
of power outages. This led to the first IGP for Iju water works; the
Akute IGP now runs at about 90 percent. But it doesn’t solve the
problem. Some of these facilities have aged; Iju was built around 1900.
That’s why you will see we are laying new pipes through Eko Bridge.
Essentially,
we have almost completed the short-term plan. The medium term plan is
to build bigger water works. Oto-Ikosi is completed now and being
tested. That is four million gallons to feed part of Epe and support
Ikorodu. We have Odo-mola, which is 25 million gallons.
There is
also the Adiyan phase II, which is 70 million gallons a day. We have
already started constructing this from the budget. We will finish that
in 2016.
That will help us supply Alimosho and Agege, who are
actually close to the water source (Iju) but who don’t benefit from it
because the Europeans, who built it, didn’t include them among
beneficiaries.
In Badagry, we want it to stand alone. Ishashi is
four million gallons. And we are also upgrading Ishashi to 12 million
gallons a day.
The same thing with water treatment and sewage! The
capacity was barely 10 percent. We drew up a 10-year plan. And that is
why we now have a Lagos State Water Regulatory Commission, which will
regulate the use of clean water and recycling of used water.
We went
into Yaba for massive rehabilitation of what was once a prime middle
class community. Three roads were commissioned for construction and we
finished substantially 80 percent of the works there. We are
regenerating Apapa as well. Some of old roads in Victoria Island are
being constructed. The same type of construction is going on in
Alimosho. We have finished LASU-Iba Road. It is about 20 kilometers and
four-lane, as well as Governor’s Road and a couple of other roads. This
time last year, we handed over 11 new roads in Alimosho.
In all
this, we have consciously kept one contractor; almost like a resident
contractor. Once you finished, we move you to the next phase. In
Ikorodu, for example, the resident
contractors are two; the Chinese
and Arab Contractors. The Chinese are doing the main road and the Arab
Contractors are doing the inner ones.
In Mile 12 and Agiliti, there
is a new bridge and about seven new roads that will finish in about
June. In Ijegun-Isheri, you have Hi-Tec there, constructing the bridge
to link the two communities.
So, there is a conscious effort to be
methodical so that, instead of demobilizing one contractor and bringing
another one, we have a network of roads and we tackle them one after the
other.
*Fashola
As
you wind down on your tenure, are there any other development plans in
the offing you have not talked about? And how do you react to the
allegation that some of these projects are elitist?
If
it is the elite who live in Mile 12, in Agiliti, then I am happy to
serve them. If it is the elite who live in Ajegunle, where we handed
over a new road last week, I am happy to serve to them. Also,
if it
is the elite who live in Mushin, where we handed over 16 roads, then I
am happy to serve them. If it is the elite who live in Ikeja, where we
just finished Kodeso and Medical Roads, it is my pleasure to serve them;
they are taxpayers too.
The biggest project that we are
undertaking, the transport project… from Mile 12 through Ikorodu Road,
if it is the elite who live in this 17 kilometer road expansion, I am
happy to serve them. If you go from Orile right through to Alaba, Mile 2
we are doing the train station and if that also is for the elite who
live there, I should be so delighted to serve them. These are places
where no activity of any sustainable attention had been paid. Over the
years, we have not really had this long period of government to really
sit down, develop a plan and run with it. Yes, we haven’t served
everybody and we can pretend we will be able to serve everybody. But the
fact that an asset is built in a community where you live doesn’t mean
that it belongs to you. And the choices that we have always made, given
our limited resources, is ‘where is the most impactful area of need?’
People
have now forgotten what the areas around Stadium, Barracks and Alaka
used to look like. There is a seven kilometer of drainage submerged
under that road today, because when we started the BRT system, that was
where the buses used to get trapped. It occurred to us then that instead
of going to do residential roads, ‘why don’t we fix roads that take
people to places of their daily bread?’
Roughly about six million
commuters move around there daily. That’s one of the busiest roads. Then
we went to open up Agege Motor Road and Oshodi to free traffic that
used to be a daily nightmare to people. I remember that people at the
Airport toll gate were not happy with us because our effort impacted
negatively on their revenue. Then, people were paying to avoid that
gridlock at Oshodi only to come back to Agege Motor Road. We succeeded
in putting that money back in their pockets. This debate (on elitism or
otherwise) will never go away. In any case, I am proud to be serving
somebody. The pain on the other side is that, today, we don’t have
electricity, but does it really matter who first got it? If some people
start to get it, the rest of us can hope it will soon get to us.
When
you started out, not much of a politician was seen in you. But for
sustainability of some of your projects, how concerned are you about
your successor? Have you now transmuted to a political godfather enough
to say, for sustainability, you prefer Mr. A or Mrs. B as successor?
The answer to that is to continue to insist that a government that is
run around institutions is the most sustainable form of government.
Lagos State has been very lucky so far to have a lot of action
governors. But how much we can continue to build on luck is another
thing. Up to my immediate predecessor in office, they have all been very
wonderful people in office. I think what we need is to move to action
government, where whatever happens, the system will run. That is why we
are doing a lot of human capacity development, training public servants;
part of the reasons behind our last retreat that had become very
frequent. We have also yielded a lot of independence to parastatals so
that we can hold people responsible for implementation.
When
ministries focus on policy formulation and articulation and allow
parastatals to implement, you have a more efficient public service.
Examples are already there. For example, the Ministry of
Environment
is our policy formulator in waste management, whether it is solid or
liquid or polluted airwaves while an agency like LASEMA is dealing with
air and liquid waste and LAWMA dealing with solid waste. So, if there
is particular problem, the commissioner knows who to call. We are also
seeing the same thing in the transportation sector; LAMATA is dealing
with the public through the BRT system and coordinating the rail.
The
Lagos State Water Authority is running the water system, building the
jetties and developing the regulations for the ferries. The same thing
is in the Ministry of Works. The ministry now takes over the segmented
maintenance of roads, through Public Works Corporation. Last year alone
they did more than 900 roads – construction and rehabilitations. There
is now a separate department in charge of traffic lights. So, if a
traffic light fails, the commissioner knows who the head of that
department is. We are creating specialization in an organic way that
cascades to the pyramid of the organogram.
So, whoever becomes the
next governor, all he needs to do is to take those people’s budget,
give them the money they need; because they already know what to do.
There
are some new FERMA-trainees seen around the state. How much do you know
about this development? And is FERMA going to replace the Federal Road
Safety Commission, FRSC? Honestly, I really don’t know
a thing about it. But when contacted, the Minister of Works said it
did not have his approval. The parastatal is under the Ministry of
Works, but the question to ask is
what is going on? Where is the
money for this particular exercise coming from? If they are recruiting,
what is the purpose? If they want to police federal highways, what is
now the role of the FRSC? Is it a task force such as contemplated
within the law? Have they appropriated funding for it because you can’t
have an agency in a constitutional democracy without having
appropriation for it in the budget! Or are you funding them with slush
fund? Is it SURE-P money, meant for the development of Lagos State that
is being used to do this?
And, again, you ask yourself, ‘what is the need for such a task force?’
There
are about 10,000 roads in the state, out of which 6,000 belong to the
state government. A little over 3,000 belong to the local government.
Less than 120 belong to the Federal Government. So what do you need such
a large army for, unless there are some ulterior motives? I hope we are
not going back to the days of machetes.
If the resort is
violence, they have served Lagosians notice. For me, if that is the way
to repay Lagosians for the votes they receive here, we will review our
strategies.
With the gale of defections into the All
Progressives Congress, there is hardly any difference between that party
and the Peoples Democratic Party. If this were so, why would one want
to cast his or her vote for the APC instead of the PDP?
Even our worst critics cannot sustain any argument about the fact that
in the state that we have added value; visible and demonstrable value.
Fortunately, in most of those states: Edo, Ekiti, Ogun, Osun and Oyo,
the electorate have had the misfortune to have been governed by the
PDP-led governments. The choice is now clearer to them. If you take Ogun
State, for example, in less than two years, bridges have been built. If
you take Oyo as another example, the bad stories about the eyesores
have disappeared. They now even have a bridge, which is the first in
about 34 years. So, the electorate have seen both sides of the coin now
and they are wiser. This can only suggest to you that it is a model
that is working, by peer review, by peer influence and by healthy
competition among the governors to succeed; that can only be good for
the states.
Now, if you look at the other side that decided to join
us, you cannot dismiss their achievement by a wave of the hand; even
under PDP. But they have seen clearly that development cannot continue
with sudden disappearance of revenues while they are expected to keep a
conspiratorial silence and continue benefitting. In terms of public
accountability, we bring that to the table.
Secondly, and perhaps,
more importantly, like-minds are calling unto each other about the need
for the development of the country. In any political arena, people are
complaining that things are not moving in the country, where the
national government has 52 percent of the resources. Even with the very
best effort of the 36 states and over 700 local governments, if they
perform at a 100 percent, in terms of risk analysis and risk allotment,
if they keep less than 50 percent of resources, their 100 percent is
still not a pass mark. But in spite of these complaints, people still
feel that nobody can defeat this behemoth. ‘So, we will either not vote
or we will vote for them because we know they will not lose.’ And that
is what APC also brings to the table for Nigerians — to give them a
real choice. Ultimately, it is people of Nigeria who will get the
opportunity to be in absolute control of their destiny and then whip
governments into line.
Because in the cases where you have thin
margins between parliamentary representation, state representations, one
bad choice and you are out because the other party stands a fair chance
to win
the election. Of course, there will be smaller parties.
Parties can be more definitive when coalitions are necessary as we saw
in Britain, where Liberal Democrats and the Conservative partnered to
kick Labour out; and even they have started fighting. None of the
disagreements that you have also seen here is peculiar to us.
There
are appointments Obama cannot make today. You may quarrel with the
morality of it, but the legitimacy of it is unquestionable. That is what
lies at the heart of the doctrine of separation of powers and checks
and balances. And the position our party has taken is a contingent
position. You cannot hide behind a finger and say you don’t know what is
going on in Rivers State. If you don’t, it must be in your enlightened
best interest to know. Security of life and property is the primary
reason government exists. And even if there is no legal duty, I think
there is moral duty.
As things continue to unfold, you will see
clearly that we are a party of method and of process and in the fullest
of time we will unveil to you in a very clear detail what we are about.
But again, you
cannot have a party without people, and we are
following our plan. Our plan was to register the party, against all the
odds, against history that no merger has ever been concluded. It is a
defining event in the political history of Nigeria. Having finished
that, we went into contact and mobilization, we are now going into
membership registration which entails producing the management of the
party and, when that is done, we will tell you Nigerians why we want to
be members of the APC.
Your party’s directive to its
members in the National Assembly to block executive bill, I read about
you defending it and you have also done so here; in my word, I think it
is pre mature because your party doesn’t have that majority in both
houses and another thing is, what is the case of constructive
engagement?
You have rushed to judgment. I don’t
think that we should be repulsed by the idea, it hasn’t happened, but we
are saying, if certain things do not happen as they relate to law and
order, we will come to a conclusion that this is a pre-meditated design
to use executive power and, if there is no communication, we will bring
you to the table and one of the ways to do so is by exercising our own
powers; I have always said that the virtue of power is the restraint in
exercising it, but it is sometimes important to remind people that that
power exists. When the party was meeting and setting up its members to
withdraw operations from the executive; they were withdrawing
cooperation from the executive.
If you know the way legislative
business goes, you cannot have clear lines in parliament. It is also for
our leadership to say, ‘Let us come together and deliberate on
issues’. I think that because our democracy is just about 14 years, it
is going to throw up many learning curves, it needs a lot of maturity
for one to realise how much power one has and to know that you can’t act
on your own. Therefore, we must see the glass as half full all the
time, we don’t want the nation to collapse because we want to win and we
expect that we will win.
We are beginning to witness discontent on defection from APC, how is the party handling disagreements?
The more the Nigerian public gets involved in politics and understand
politics for what it is, the better; it is about interests and human
beings and everybody wants something. There are conflicts defined by
interests that would be resolved. That is high-wire politics going on.
Let’s just decompose these things and understand them, it is happening
on the macro to the micro, it is local, international and global.
The
taxes in Lagos, following down to the principle of federalism, which
you have always preached, will it be okay if the money you get from
Alimosho with the highest population and all that is spent almost
exclusively in Alimosho? I think the first thing to do
is to explain that there are different sources of revenues. Taking
advertising for instance, it is income that comes to the local
government under the management of LASA, which is a company statutorily
created, owned by the state and local government; because the local
government has responsibility for advertising which takes place on the
land managed by the state, so there is a joint business.
When the
income is distributed at the end of the year, there is a derivation
principle that goes to the local government. In terms of how resources
are allocated, the needs across the state are not the same; in some
places, all you need to do is patch a road while in others you have to
start from the beginning. Every time you construct a road, people take
positions, capital appreciation follows road construction and the way to
go is to ask where the taxes for roads like the LASU- Iba and Ijegun
come from. There was a time when the kind of development and
construction in Alimosho didn’t go on and so at the end of the day, it’s
not easy to isolate and say this is what came from here, the only way
we do that kind of isolation is if we collect capital development levies
for land sold in any estate, we use the money from that estate to build
its roads, drainages and infrastructure; it doesn’t go a lot but it
helps.
*Fashola
That
is why we have scheme accounts; Lekki phase one has a scheme account.
When the residents pay, the money goes back to them; after UACPDC bought
1004 Estate and paid their capital development levy, we used it to
start phase two of Adetokunbo Ademola Road.But that did not fund the
road to completion of the Lekki -Epe Expressway.
The point is that
all the revenues go to the consolidated revenues of the state and what
we do is a budget based on input and on development plan.
Many
of us are worried about the place of the local government in your
development plans. Where I live there is absolutely no impact of that
level of government at all…
No, they may not have
served your personal needs at the moment and that will not be good to
generalise; because you don’t feel the impact, those who could see
appreciate it. Local governments are driving primary healthcare and
primary education, which are the foundation of development of the most
important resources, the human resources-making him or her health and
giving him or her skills.
You can see that we are yet to develop
certain parts of Lagos. People are building at a pace higher than we
are able to respond and that is not our fault or yours.
Now, it’s the understanding that we seek because how fast can we get across to you is a function of time.
We are not planning 100 rooms now but we are planning 400 rooms at once
across all the local governments. So, at incremental level, the work is
progressing.
For instance, in 2007, how many streets did you see
with streetlight at night? But we started with Awolowo Road. There were
streetlights but they were not working. What happened? It was one
vulcanizer at TBS, who was heating tyre and melted the cable in one of
the poles and that affected light. We fixed it and switched on. We
started putting diesel and we drove on that road and it looked like our
small London.
We continued like that; last year alone, we had over
50 roads with streetlights because there is an incremental capacity. We
are making poles in Lagos and this year we are looking at doing another
100 roads.
Alimosho had about 11 roads lit up last year. And around
Agege Motor Road, we lit up the road and traders can now sell till night
and that means doubling their income. These are the elite that I’m
serving.
In Shomolu, they used to stop selling their akara and dodo
by 6pm because of fear of insecurity. We gave them light and, today,
they sell into the night. Obalende is back.
Your
Commissioner for Budget and Planning gave the debt profile at N120
billion, but I’m aware that Lagos is the only state that pays salary
from IGR. How sustainable is this system?
Simple,
there are few things to understand. There are upper limits of debt
profiles by global standards, in relation to a certain percentage of the
GDP. We are not near that threshold anywhere.
Secondly, what types of debt profile is it, is it for recurrent expenditure or capital? It is for capital.
If in less than two years to go, I went to the stock market to raise
N85billion and it was fully subscribed and you know bankers do not want
to lose money; they know what is coming from that and they keyed in;
with these projects people earn income and because they earn income,
they pay taxes. We are simply moving the money round.
In 1999, when
my predecessor took over, we were working with N14 billion IGR and we
are now having a budget of almost half a trillion naira and how do you
want us to finance that? Is it the money under the pillow? You can’t
build a city like that. We want rail and all that, you don’t do it
waiting for people to bring kobo kobo.
For instance, the track
Europeans built are still there. It is a 100-year asset. You have to
finance it by debt and it will pay off.
During Tinubu’s time, when he drew N15 billion out of N25 billion bond, they said he had mortgaged Lagos.
I paid that debt in my first year in the office. The first bond that we took is maturing this year.
It is a N50 billion bond. We have N90 billion in trustees account to pay off N50billion.
If we keep waiting until the money gathers together, you can’t begin to
tell me that there is no road to your house. Where am I supposed to
build them? The road that Asiwaju built with N15 billion, I can’t touch
again with the same amount of money. The dollar was trading at less than
one to a naira, but it is almost doubled.
When I assumed office,
the dollar was at $1 to N112 and we were borrowing at 10 per cent. Now
you are lucky to get at 17 per cent.
Dollar is now $1 to over N170.
Those are the realities and we must salute our economic team for the
investment they have been able to achieve.
If not for that, would
you have LASU-Iba Road, that rail, or make Ikorodu Road motorable
today; Badagry expressway and others? The money we are spending on
Ikorodu Road is a loan. It’s a long-term loan. Take the money now and
pay back later as long as the people continue to pay their taxes and
financial capacity continues.
Was your visit to Edo State solely to endorse the presidential ambition of Governor Adams Oshiomhole?
Really, our country needs development and knowing Edo well, with the
things I saw there, I think it’s a development that should come on board
every state if that experience is brought to a larger theater of
expression.
I’m in support of everybody, who has worked so that we
will not come up to say we will not have electricity because we do not
have gas.
That gas is not gotten from one alien country, it’s seated underneath us.
It baffles me each time thing I hear we have money, but we are looking
for the whereabouts of 12billion dollars. Let us even say for the sake
of argument, why couldn’t that money be spent on pipelines to pump fuel
over the country or even repair the pipelines?
The issue is, after
many years that the country has been extracting crude oil, are the pipes
not due for change? I’m changing water pipes on the bridge. So we spent
huge sums on power project yet there is no solution.
And I begin to
wonder what the United Arab Emirate spent in their total power energy?
They powered the desert. How much more can it cost? So it was in that
context that I said that I will support any one who is doing well and
who has done well, so that such development will come across on board.
In this moment of power shift, will the northerners in your party support him?
I
can’t speak for a group. That is your fear. I have a stake. At the end,
you can’t speak for a group. They decide on what to be done. For now we
are still early in our party programme to discuss the issue of
candidates. Until we put in place the organs of party and officers,
that question will not be addressed.
The Information
Minister, Labaran Maku recently said that, at all levels, no government
has done what the Jonathan administration had done. But here you are
reeling out achievements. How does that make you feel, compared to the
assertion that they have done the best?
All I can
say is that I hope the best of Nigeria is really further ahead. I don’t
want to be the best governor of Lagos. I want better governors to come
after me. I think that it’s a leadership problem.
When this sort of
statement is made, you must contextualize it into whether or not we
really have prepared ourselves for the kind of responsibilities that we
have. Would there have been a Nigeria if those who fought the war didn’t
sacrifice? So, for somebody to come after that to say, ‘we are the
best…’ That was governance. Keeping the peace and unity of this country,
people lost their lives. They served.
How do you dishonour their
memory and service by saying nobody has done what you have done? I have
never heard any government that wants to progress say those kinds of
things. There must be a place for your predecessors. Its a ladder and a
house built on so many blocks of blood, sweat and tears. And whether
you like it or not, you will hand over the baton. How would you feel
after that, when somebody says you haven’t done anything? Let’s look at
power. Did they pass the legislation? They are concluding the process.
There is pension reform today. Did they pass the legislation? It’s a process of thinking and doing sometimes. As
I
told people, Thabo Mbeki hosted the World Cup, was he the one who did
the bidding for it? What is the value they have added to the GSM today?
There are more drop calls now than when the system started. Were they
the ones who did it? It was a government that licensed private TV
otherwise all of us would be locked on to NTA today and you won’t be
here because there would only have been Daily Times. That’s the
incremental contributions of your predecessors. So, how are they
supposed to feel? And you want to build a nation? You’re provoking
everybody? I think there can be better tactics to underscore your
development. We can’t show that we are good by showing that everybody is
bad. Unfortunately, it’s a strategy that has also worked in some
states, but I have always said, look, you must acknowledge what your
predecessors have done. They may not have done as much as you have done.
They may have operated at a more difficult time than you are operating,
but they added value. I don’t believe that anybody is absolutely
useless. Everything operates in a time and space. It’s a leadership
problem. Democracy is growing. We are building a nation undoubtedly, but
we must recognize everybody’s contributions.
Sunny Ade at 28
Sunny Ade in Glo Advert
A photo supposedly showing the corpse of Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau
