Against the run of play, former Lagos
State Commissioner for Establishment Pensions and Training, Babajide Sanwo-Olu,
emerged as the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
In this wide-ranging interview with selected journalists, he speaks on several
critical issues facing the state. Wale Ajetunmobi was there.
You defeated Governor Akinwunmi
Ambode in the APC primaries that would have earned him a second term, will you
allow him lead your campaign?
Well, thank you very much. Yes, it is
true that I won the APC primary which qualified me as the gubernatorial
candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2019 elections. I must
also let you know that the last two months have been very interesting for me
and the entire political landscape in the country because of the unprecedented
nature of the outcome.
That means politics is working. It
also implies that when you give power to the people, especially via the type of
primary we ran, which was direct primary, you certainly cannot second-guess the
outcome. With that outcome, Lagosians, who are APC members, have provided me
with the huge opportunity of serving Lagosians and given me the responsibility
of leading the state.
As the winner of the APC primary, and
by the reason of their votes, I am now in this position; seeking the supports
and votes of Lagosians towards becoming the next Governor of Lagos State. I am
humbled by their trust in me, and I must say that I am equally equipped for the
role of the Governor of Lagos State.
The second part of your question,
which is whether Governor Ambode will play a role in my campaign. See, Governor
Ambode is my Governor. We have only one Governor in Lagos today, and his name
is Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode. We are in the same APC. He will certainly lead
my campaign and play all the important roles he needs to play for us to win.
The primary has gone, and we are in
the trenches with our sleeves rolled-up, working hard and strategizing on how
to attain electoral victory for our party. Beyond politicking, Governor Ambode
is my brother. We have known ourselves long before now. As I said earlier, we
are members of the same political family.
As party men, we are building a
strong coalition and formidable force that will deliver victory to our party in
the coming election in Lagos. He has all the machinery that will help me, and
the party achieve this goal. In terms of bitterness, I hold no bitterness
and he probably does not as well. We will do all our best. I will open up to
him to give me all the support I require to do well in the election. Party men
and women have spoken.
The task before us is to go to the
people of Lagos, who are not card carrying members of our party, to seek their
mandate. We need to make Lagosians know that my candidacy is the one that will
deliver the greatest good for the greatest number of people. That is what this
election is about and that is what my candidacy represents.
Are
you really the choice of APC members, or just a stooge of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu
whom he imposed on the party?
I find comments like this interesting
when I hear them. I am sure you have been following developments in Lagos APC
since the primary where over 1million party men and women came out to cast
their votes and the results were out, a product of which I am. My emergence or
candidacy has nothing to do with Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu. It has nothing to
do with the party leadership. It has to do with me taking part in a direct
primary.
A direct primary in which every
card-carrying party member exercised their voting right. It is not fair to
reduce this to just a man, who is our leader. Asiwaju Bola Tinubu is not just a
state leader, he is a national leader of our party. He is preoccupied with
issues about the development of Nigeria. He is busy with how to achieve the
Nigerian dream. He is our father. He is our leader. We are all his children.
There is no issue about somebody
being his favourite. The issue is about over 1 million card-carrying members of
APC in Lagos who decided who the party flag bearer should be with their votes,
and this, I think, is the way to see what happened.
Who
is Babajide Sanwo-Olu and at what point did you decide to become Governor of
Lagos State?
Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu is a
53-year old man. If I begin to say everything about myself it will probably
take about 53 years to roll-out the answers to your question. In very simple
term, I have been a public and private sector man. I have done 17years in the
private sector, banking to be precise, I have done 13 years in the public
sector. I was a three-time Commissioner in Lagos State, and until recently, the
MD/CEO of perhaps the biggest and oldest real estate development company in
Nigeria – that is Lagos State Development Property Company (LSDPC).
I have been Special Adviser to a
Deputy Governor of the state and later to the Governor. I have served under 3
Governors of Lagos State. I have run the balance sheet of banks, three
different banks, where I was Treasurer- Lead Merchant Bank, UBA and First
Atlantic Bank (now part of First City Monument Bank). I have worked as a
Seismic Surveyor with United Geophysical Nigeria Ltd (a seismic data
acquisition company) in a role which took me round the whole Niger Delta and
Lake Chad region prospecting crude oil for Shell Petroleum Development Company
(SPDC) and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
I also ran a start-up company in the
90s, which allowed for extensive nurturing of my entrepreneurial skills. I have
done so many great things. As to when did I decide to be Governor, I have always
known that the opportunity will present itself one day. Let me say my children
too have always said to me that Daddy with all this your passion for public
service, helping people and all that, it would not be out of place for you to
run for office and steer the state.
On a lighter note, with the
‘Not-Too-Young-To-Run’ people right behind us. If I don’t take the opportunity
now, I may not have it again. I have always had it in me and since the
opportunity presented itself, there is no better time than now to do it.
Your
main opponent in the election is Jimi Agbaje. Where do you think you are better
than him and are you scared that you can lose to him?
Well, Mr. Jimi Agbaje is a fellow
Lagosian. He is an Egbon. He is someone I know and he is someone I have personal
respect for being an Egbon. That is how we were trained and brought up to have
respect for people and most especially those who are older than us. He is
certainly older than me, but on the political landscape, our pedigrees and
experiences are not the same. If you talk of public service experience,
effective representation and credentials, I am certainly better than him.
Yes, it is true he has contested
three times and you know what the results have been for him. You asked if I am
scared. Scared of what? What will a 53 years old man like me be scared of. We
are going into the election and I am sure it will be a good contest. At the end
of the day, I will win the election. Let me say again that I respect him and
his tenacity for wanting to lead the state.
What
will you say about Governor Ambode’s statement regarding your mental health and
allegation of spending fake dollars in the US?
This is the umpteenth time I will be
asked this same question and my answer has been the same. You need to know that
during politicking, things happen and people say things they don’t really mean
all in the spirit of politics. They have to say it just to throw darts at the
other person. Governor Ambode is someone I have great respect for. He is the
Governor of the state. He is my Governor and he occupies the office I am
aspiring to. I am in no way going to speak against that office or the person
that sits in that office. Like I said before, it was all politics that went the
wrong way.
The simple answer is, none of those
things happened. I have never been detained in the US or any country in the
world. I did not spend fake dollars anywhere in the world and I am not that
type of a person. I was still in the United States a couple of months
back. I have never been to Gbagada General Hospital for any ailment. I don’t
have any medical record at the hospital.
In fact, the two times I have even
been to Gbagada General Hospital were to donate. One was on my birthday when I
went around the wards to donate gifts. The second, I was on charity mission,
looking out for those who needed help which I provided. That is who I am and
who I will always be. I have done this in the last 5 to 6 years.
Will
you complete ongoing infrastructural projects initiated by Governor Ambode in
the event his administration is unable to complete them before May 2019?
You know governance is a continuum.
You take over both assets and liabilities whenever you assume office as
Governor in the case of a State. And whichever way you look at it we are same
party. I have been in the system as Commissioner. I have run the state civil
service as the Commissioner for Establishment, Pensions and Training. I have
managed the Budget of Lagos State as Commissioner of Budget and Economic
Planning. So, I know how some of these things work.
Part of what we will see is the
medium-term expenditure framework and projects that are ongoing. We will
certainly continue all projects that already have public funds committed to
them. It will make no sense to have abandoned projects everywhere. We will complete
any uncompleted project and put them to use for the benefits of Lagosians and
Nigerians in general. We will certainly bring about other projects and
innovations that will complement all of the things that are happening in the
state.
Lagos
has the largest population of middle-class and possibly the poor people in
Nigeria, who often struggle to pay for expensive private schools and private
hospitals for their children. What will you do to arrest the decay in public
education and healthcare in Lagos?
Let me first correct something here.
I think it is not fair to generally use words such as ‘decay’ and ‘complete
breakdown’. They are extreme and also suggesting that government is not doing
anything at all in the two sectors you mentioned. That is not true, but it may
mean that we need to improve on what we have and do much better.
If we begin to compute the number of
people in Lagos daily who use existing facilities in the state, then we will
realise why effective planning has been difficult. Our plan is to roll-out a
lot initiatives and improve on social planning. Our focus is on the people at
the bottom of the pyramid. The very poor people you talked about, who do not
have any choice.
Those who are able to take their
children to private schools or private hospitals have choices, and can pay for
what they need. Again, I must add that, the school a child attends is a
prerogative of the parents. Those who will take their children to private
schools will still do, regardless of whatever government provides. It is the
poor people who do not have a choice that the government must make giving their
children the opportunities they need in life a priority.
We must bring opportunities to the
poor. We have about 1,300 public primary schools in Lagos. We will improve on
the infrastructure in our public schools and hospitals, and train personnel to
deliver quality services to the people. I am a product of the public school
system from primary school to the University. I understand what you are saying
perfectly. We must make the school system functional, and run it better.
It is imperative that we create opportunities for the children of the poor.
On health, we have commissioned a
research, which will be completed soon. Some of the issues around
accessibility, affordability and effective healthcare delivery system will be
frontally addressed. We have the facilities, but we need to bring a lot of
reforms into the health sector that will make healthcare affordable to
Lagosians, and qualitative too.
We will look at the State Health
Insurance Scheme (SHIS) for citizens and how all these tie into a working
healthcare system. We will integrate the reports of the survey into our policy
agenda on healthcare. Finally, we will espouse our manifesto and will soon be
releasing them to the public going forward.
There
seems to be a logjam around waste management in Lagos with PSP operators and
the Cleaner Lagos Initiative championed by the current APC government in the
state with Visionscape. Will you abandon the Cleaner Lagos Initiative or
re-tweak it and also the matter of N50billion Bond Guarantee Lagos State gave
for Visionscape?
Let’s be very careful about just
throwing figures all around. I don’t know anything about N50billion. It is
possible the government may have given Visionscape some amount. I do not know
the terms of engagement of Visionscape as we speak. I am not the Governor. I do
not have the specifics. What I will say is that we won’t throw away the baby
with the bathwater.
If there are issues around the
Cleaner Lagos Initiative and Visionscape engagement that can be resolved, we
will certainly look into them. If it is about the implementation of the
initiative, we will see what the problem is. If it is the structure or the
process around the whole arrangement, we will look into that too. I am sure
that there are positives to keep in the whole idea, while we will certainly do
away with the negatives.
On Private Sector Participants
(PSPs), I am sure it is not all bad news for them. Whatever must have gone
wrong with the PSP arrangement will be holistically looked into. The
bottom-line is Lagos needs to be clean. The refuse needs to go. More
importantly, we now need to go back to ourselves as individuals and embrace a
better culture of refuse disposal, which begins with waste sorting. It is when
we start sorting our waste that waste management becomes more effective, and
transformable to wealth. We do not need to mix organic waste with plastic
bottles for example and all what not. Our people must sort waste and separate
them properly.
We need a total mindset change.
Advocacy must come into this. Public enlightenment will play a pivotal role in
this attitudinal change. It is not going to be a one-size fits all solution.
What I can assure our people is that we will solve the problems associated with
waste management in Lagos. Lagos will be cleaner and more livable for
all.
Too
much man-hour is lost to what has become a very bad traffic situation in Lagos
and this has led to low productivity in Lagos with people spending hours in traffic.
Do you have any plan to tackle the gridlock in Lagos if elected as Governor?
Traffic management is a very serious
issue, but also a low hanging fruit our government will pluck easily. Our first
study commissioned a couple of weeks ago on traffic hot spots in Lagos showed
that there are about 47 points in Lagos where traffic gridlock is always very
bad. By the time we drill further down in the last phase of the report, it may
be a little above 60 points, where traffic is usually very bad around Lagos.
One of the things we need to
creatively think about is identifying the causes of gridlock in these areas.
Already, we have seen that in some places, location of fuel stations have been
identified as one of the causes of the problem. In some other areas, offices
and commercial buildings without parking spaces are contributors to the jams.
Quick Service Restaurants, where vehicles are reversing-out of car parks also
contribute to blocking of our roads. Of course, we also know that bad
roads are a major contributor to this challenge.
We need to design solutions and look
at each location case by case. We are currently working with some traffic
management experts, who will help us look into the issues and come-up with
smart solutions. There are areas all we need to reduce the big roundabouts.
There is also the issue of our
people. I mean behavioural issues that we need to address. Many of our people
do not know that they are not the only road users. People must drive
responsibly and respect the right of other road users. We need to take some of
these messages back home to educate ourselves. People must know that the same
right they have to use our roads is the same right others have. We must respect
ourselves on the roads. Appropriate road use conducts can contribute
significantly to removing congestions from our roads.
Traffic signs and traffic lights must
be obeyed. It is only when we do the little things we need to do as citizens
that we can solve some of our problems, including the gridlocks on our roads.
People should not drive against traffic when there is no need to do so, or when
not directed to do so by traffic management officers.
We will bring increased efficiency
into traffic management in the state. LASTMA officers will be retrained, and
where there is need for recruitment of more officers, we will do that. We will
do a lot of enlightenment campaign around the issues, while working on
implementable solutions. Every challenge will get a bespoke solution. We need
to know the requirements of each traffic hot-spot.
Part of the solution could also be,
for example, in the morning, during rush hours you see places where traffic is
moving on one side and not moving on the other side. A smart solution is to
look at how we can extend some of the free lanes in the morning and in the
evening reverse same into another lane. This means that in the morning,
we turn a 4-lane road into a 6-lane, and reverse the order in the evening
because the pressure point has changed. People are going back home from work
and other places they drove to in the morning.
See, simple solutions like directing
traffic to the free lanes to decongest our roads as quickly as possible,
especially in the evening, during rush hours, could reduce travel time and
enhance our productivity. Even, there are health benefits to effective traffic
management, so it’s a major point of consideration for our government.
Our focus is beyond just road travels
within the state. We are thinking about an integrated transportation system
befitting a megacity state like Lagos. A 3rd of Lagos is water. That suggests
that we have a huge water transportation opportunity and alternative. The
waterways need to be properly mapped to help navigation. Where we have water
body that needs to be dredged to allow boats to move well, we will do. I know
one of the problems with water transportation in Lagos is lack of investment,
and operators are not willing to invest because of poor returns. The operators
complain of poor patronage. When they take people from Ikorodu to Island in the
morning, they return the boat empty without passengers because less people go
towards the area in the morning. We will have to look at how we can help them
solve that problem, such that the venture becomes profitable and water
transport more efficient.
We also have the rail projects that
we need to complete, especially the Blueline from Okokomaiko to CMS. We need to
complete the track and bring the rolling stock to get it operational. It is
about funding. We will find a way to complete that rail project. Lagos needs a
transportation system outside the roads that can move thousands of people
daily.
As we continue to engage on expansion
of our BRT corridors, develop water transportation and deal with the road
issues, I believe we will be able to address the problem of traffic gridlock in
Lagos. It is worth emphasizing too, that there is no mega city like Lagos,
where traffic challenges are eliminated completely. In cities like New York,
Chicago, Cairo etc., where they have better public transportation system, they
still have traffic issues. It is just that people know the traffic hours,
which is usually the rush hours in the morning and evening, and plan their
journeys accordingly.
Lagosians
along the Festac and Badagry axis have complained about the neglect of the
expressway to the Seme border. The road project does not seem to be progressing
well. What do you plan to do to solve the problem along that axis?
That is actually a major concern for
me. That axis is supposed to be a major Trans-West Africa economic road. It
should serve as a major corridor for moving goods and services to the West
coast and our borders. I was in government when we conceived the project 10
years ago. It was designed to be a dual carriage, of 5 lanes each. We will have
10 lanes in all. It was a well-conceived idea. I cannot say what the problem
really is with the project, but I can say that for our government, the project
will be a priority, when elected by the people of Lagos.
That route is a corridor that carries
traffic into the West African countries. It is very important we take it up.
The good thing here is that that road is a Federal Government project, which
Lagos undertook to do because of its economic importance. The Federal
Government has now awarded a contract from Agbara junction to Seme border on
the same road. That is a major breakthrough for us on Badagry-Seme Border
Express. Lagos State will only need to fix the 10 lanes up to Agbara, hoping to
get a reimbursement from the Federal Government on the side we would have done.
There
is very wrong impression people have about Lagos as a rich state because of its
IGR compared to other states. We know Lagos is actually poor if we compared the
revenue to what the state needs in area of infrastructure and social services.
What will you do differently to increase government revenue without adding more
to the tax burden and other levies on the people?
Very good question. You said people
have the impression that Lagos is rich. With the size of our economy, the
numbers are not there yet on government revenue. Lagos should in the minimum be
doing 4 times better than her current revenue. We are meant to be doing 6 or 7
times the size of the budget we are running now. Go and check it out, the
budget of the New York Police Department (NYPD) that provides security for the
City of New York alone, not State of New York, is $5.6b dollars per annum. The
budget for New York City Fire department is about $3b dollars per annum. Boston
as a city spends more money on its Department of Health in a year than the
entire budget of Lagos State that will provides for over 20million people.
