In a piece titled "Meet The Man Who Tamed Nigeria's
Most Lawless City", UK Telegraph chronicles how
Governor Fashola came into office and transformed
Lagos and also how he effectively managed the Ebola
epidermic in the state. Read below...
He famously claims to be "just doing his job". But
in a land where politicians are known for doing
anything but, that alone has been enough to make
Babatunde Fashola, boss of the vast Nigerian city
of Lagos, a very popular man.
Confounding the image of Nigerian leaders as corrupt
and incompetent, the 51-year-old governor has won
near-celebrity status for transforming west Africa's
biggest city, cleaing up its crime-ridden slums and
declaring war on corrupt police and civil servants.
Next month, he will come to London to meet business
leaders and Mayor Boris Johnson's officials, wooing
investors with talk of how he has spent the last seven
years building new transport hubs and gleaming
business parks.
Yet arguably his biggest achievement in office took
place just last week, and was done without a bulldozer
in sight. That was when his country was officially
declared free of Ebola , which first spread to Nigeria
three months ago when Patrick Sawyer, an infected
Liberian diplomat, flew into Lagos airport.
Health officials had long feared that the outbreak,
which has already claimed nearly 5,000 lives elsewhere
in west Africa, would reach catastrophic proportions
were it to spread through Lagos. One of the largest
cities in the world, it is home to an estimated 17 million
people, many of them living in sprawling shanty towns
that would have become vast reservoirs for infection.
To make matters worse, when the outbreak first
happened, medics were on strike.
Instead, Mr Fashola turned a looming disaster into a
public health and PR triumph. Breaking off from a trip
overseas, he took personal charge of the operation to
track down and quarantine nearly 1,000 people feared
to have been infected since Mr Sawyer's arrival.
Last week, what would have been a formidably complex
operation in any country came to a successful end,
when the World Health Organisation announced that
since Nigeria had had no new cases for six weeks, it
was now officially rid of the virus.
"This is a spectacular success story," said Rui Gama
Vaz, a WHO spokesman, who prompted an applause
when he broke the news at a press conference in
Nigeria on Tuesday. "It shows that Ebola can be
contained.
The WHO announcement was a rare glimmer of hope in
the fight against Ebola, and even rarer vote of
confidence in a branch of the Nigerian government,
which was heavily criticised over its response to the
abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls by the Boko
Haram insurgent group in April. As a columninst in
Nigeria's Leadership newspaper put it last week: "For
once, we did not underachieve."
For Mr Fashola's many supporters, it is also yet more
proof that the 51-year-old ex-lawyer is a future
president in the making, a much-needed technocrat in a
country dominated far too long by ageing "Big Men"
and ex-generals.
"He is the best governor we have ever had," said Odun
Babalola, a Lagos-based pension fund portfolio
manager. "He's made a lot of progress in schools,
railways, and infrastructure, and unlike a lot of
politicians, who are corrupt, he's a good administrator."
True, the successful tackling of the Ebola outbreak was
not Mr Fashola's doing alone. For a start, the doctor's
strike that was under way when Mr Sawyer collapsed
at Lagos airport turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
Rather than being taken to one of Lagos's vast public
hospitals, where he might have languished for hours
and infected numerous fellow patients and staff, he was
instead admitted to a private clinic. There he was seen
by a sharp-eyed consultant, Stella Adadevoh, who
spotted that his symptoms were not malaria as had
been first thought.
She then alerted the Nigerian health ministry, and along
with other doctors physically restrained Sawyer when
he became aggressive and tried to leave the hospital to
fly to another Nigerian city. Her quick thinking help
stop the virus being spread more widely, but also cost
her her life: she caught Ebola herself while treating Mr
Sawyer, and has now been recommended for a national
award.
But even by the time Mr Sawyer had been isolated, the
virus was already on the loose. Knowing that he had
passed through one of the busiest airports in west
Africa, health officials had to try to track down every
single person who had potentially been infected by him,
including the other passengers on his flight. The list
started at 281 people and grew to nearly 1,000. as
eight others whom he turned out to have passed the
virus to subsequently died.
That was where Mr Fashola stepped in. He broke off
from a pilgrimage to Mecca, flew home and then helped
set up an Ebola Emergency Operations Centre, which
spearheaded the mammoth task of monitoring all those
potentially infected. A team of 2,000 officials were
trained for the task, who ended up knocking on 26,000
doors. At one point the governor was being briefed up
to ten times a day by disease control experts. He made
a point of visiting the country's Ebola treatment centre,
a way of communicating to the Nigerian public that
they should not panic needlessly.
"Command and control is very important in fighting
disease outbreaks, and he provided effective
leadership," said Dr Ike Anya, a London-based Nigerian
public health expert. "He also said exactly the right
things, urging for the need to keep calm. Regardless of
whether you support his politics, he has been very
effective as a governor and I would be happy to see
him stand for leadership."
Born into a prominent Muslim family but married to a
Christian, Mr Fashola trained as a lawyer and went into
politics after being appointed chief of staff by the
previous Lagos governor, Asiwaju Tinubu, a powerful
politician often described as Mr Fashola's "Godfather".
But while he has long enjoyed the backing of a political
"Big Man", is his role as a rare defender of Nigeria's
"Little Men" that has won him most support.
Once, while driving through Lagos in his convoy, he
famously stopped an army colonel who was driving
illegally in one of the governor's newly-built bus lanes,
berating him in front of television cameras.
"The bus is for those who cannot afford to buy cars,"
he said. "I want a zero tolerance of lawlesness, and
those who don't want to comply can leave our state."
It was one of the first times Nigerians had ever seen a
civil servant confronting a member of the security
forces, whose fondness for committing crime rather
than fighting it has long contributed to Lagos's
legendary reputation for lawlessness.
Armed robberies - sometimes by moonlighting police -
used to be so common that few people ventured out
after dark. Foreign businessmen would routinely travel
with armed escorts, and the few willing to live there
would stay mainly in a heavily-guarded diplomatic area
called Victoria Island, a rough equivalent to Baghdad's
Green Zone. Add to that the suffocating smog,
widespread squalor and regular three-hour traffic jams,
and it was no suprise that the city had a reputation as
one of the worst places in the world to live.
Today, much of the problems remain. But members of
the vast Nigerian diaspora say they now notice big
changes whenever they go back. "When you return you
see an absolute difference - things have improved 100
per cent," said Nels Abbey, a London-based Nigerian
journalist and businessman. "Traffic is not what it used
to be, bus lanes have been introduced, and it feels a lot
safer. Fashola has been like a Tory mayor for Lagos -
he is trying to make it attractive to the well-off."
Styling himself as Lagos's answer to Boris Johnson
has not endeared him to everyone. As well as laying
plans for a vast offshore business park intended as an
"African Dubai", he has accelerated programs to clear
the ever-expanding shanty towns, ordering their
occupants to return to their homes in Nigeria's poorest
east and north. That has led to criticism from human
rights groups, although others say it is hard to see how
Lagos will ever improve otherwise. "Do I endorse it?"
said Mr Nels. "I am afraid it is a bit of a necessary
evil."
Another big achievement has been increasing tax
revenues, vital in a city where the GDP of $43 billion
makes it the fifth-biggest economy in sub-Saharan
Africa. Mr Fashola has tried to sweeten the pill by
putting up signs on all new infrasructure projects,
saying "paid for by your taxes". It is a rare
acknowledgement of gratitude in a country where a
guaranteed stream of state oil wealth has historically
allowed rulers to remain aloof from the ruled.
However, despite being relected with 80 per cent of the
vote in 2011, the main hailed as Nigeria's brightest
political hope in years is far from guaranteed a life in
office. Having served two terms in office already, he is
not allowed to run as Lagos governor again. And as a
member of a minority tribe and the country's opposition
All Progressives Congress, he currently lacks the
political backing to go head to head against Goodluck
Jonathan in next year's elections.
In the meantime, fresh from ridding Lagos of Ebola, he
is focusing on an arguably even tougher challenge,
launching a new initiative to stop motorists stuck in
traffic jams from blasting their horns all day. As he put
it: "If we can overcome Ebola, then we can overcome
noise pollution."
Culled from UK Telegraph...
4

BRF baba u deserve to be a president in nigeria

Asdf

Hmmm Ok Ooo but GEJ TILL 2019 make history and reject him for the fourth time. I didnt mention any name

The pathway to a fashola presidency is voting in Buhari come 2015.