No shaking
•Fashola assures supporters on political future
•Receives The Sun Man of the Year award with Aderinokun today
By TONY ONYIMA, FEMI ADESINA and FUNKE EGBEMODE
Saturday, February 20, 2010
•Gov. Fashola
•Photo: Sun News Publishing

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Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola, has, in the last 33 months or thereabouts, established himself as a miracle worker. Ever since he assumed office, he has tackled the problems of the state head-long and has recorded successes.

How did he achieve so much within such a short time? What are the challenges he has faced? What are his plans for the future?
In an interview with Saturday Sun, Fashola talked about the Lagos of his dream. He also assured his supporters that there is no cause for alarm, in the face of fears that his political future is threatened. He was frank and unequivocal in his answers,
Excerpts:

A recent report said that Lagos is the fifth worst city to live in. Given your effort to transform Lagos, how did that make you feel?
This government has stopped seeing problems. What we are looking for are solutions. Every criticism we get brings us to a realization that there is an urgency to do a lot more and we don’t expect that these problems can be fixed overnight. The decadence, the deficit of infrastructure of about three decades can’t be turned around in just two years or eight years.

What is important is that something is being done. Efforts to rebuild Lagos started from 1999 and the key to sustain development in the life of the nation is a long-term affair, which, in essence, is what we see here. There are problems that will remain after we have all gone, as long as people remain.

There are still health issues in most prosperous economies. There are education issues and security issues of more complex natures than we have today. These problems will remain as long as the human race remains. They will task the might, skills and the intellect of international leaders across the world. That is the problem of humanity. But I would like to say, for the record, that there is an upside to that report.

When it was brought to my attention, I did an Internet search of the report and I went back three years actually. There was a 2008, 2009 and 2010 report published. First thing I noticed is that 140 cities were ranked. Now, across the whole world we have certainly a lot more than 140 cities. In Nigeria, Lagos was the only city that was ranked; so we see that as an upside.

We are the only state that got into the ranking. It is like your Forbes magazine; there are so many rich men across the world, but only a few are ever considered for ranking. So we see it that we have been acknowledged that we are among those 140 cities. Some countries have two, three cities. Canada, Australia and some countries are examples of countries that have more than one city.

So, as the only city in the country that was ranked, we saw it as an upside. Our challenge now is to move from that ranking forward. We also expect that other cities, in time, would do things similar to what we are doing here, as a way of ensuring that more cities in Nigeria get into that ranking. It is an upside, honestly. Obviously, at one point in time, probably, we were never ranked.

But does this kind of report discourage you?
No, you see, as I said, it is an upside. Once you get into ranking, your challenge now is to improve your ranking, so you don’t get dumped. It means somebody is looking at us. It is an economic intelligence report and they are saying okay, look at Lagos. They did not say look at these other cities. Some other cities in Africa did not get mentioned.

What remains is just for one to begin to study those indices. If you also look at the statistics and the measurement, infrastructure, health care, security are some of the indices. If you look at what we have done in the last two years, security is there for all to see. There is a convergence of consensus that security has improved. As we have said at different times, security is not a finished job; its challenges continue to multiply and diversify day by day. So it is our responsibility to stay on top of it, to stay ahead of it.

In terms of health care, two weeks ago, I delivered two new facilities, which help us, particularly, target the vulnerable population; women and children, towards meeting Millennium Goals 4 and 5. Each of those facilities, in Ikorodu and Isolo, gives us the capacities to increase bed spaces by 100 beds spaces in two weeks, and we have already delivered 200 spaces in each facility.

The third one is ready; five more are in completion stages in Surulere, Ajegunle, Amuwo Odofin, Alimosho, and Lekki. So by the time we finish that, we are adding 800 bed spaces more for women and children that would help our capacity to address those indices that are the basis of this kind of report. Hitherto, what was available to deal with were just General Hospitals and also Ayinke House, as referral specialist centre for women and children.

We have also Island Maternity and Massey Street Children’s hospitals. So, those are the main centres. We are putting them closer to the people and this number would certainly help the over all impact of what we do. We have seen, for example, that all these maternal mortality issues are not only about lack of facilities, but also the travel time and distance to get there. When there are emergencies and the distance is far, things can go wrong and these are what we are mitigating.

In the last two weeks, we have added eight million gallons of water to the stock water of water supply in the state and we intend to add another thirty. About 10 of the 15 micro water works are ready, are being tested and made ready operationally. So in the meantime also, we should get the two other facilities to their full capacity of 130 million gallons of water per day that would add all in full supply of 160 million gallons of water per day in Lagos. It doesn’t take us to our destination, but it is a huge injection of water supply into the state. Wherever you have good water supply, there is the guarantee of improved health care, cleanliness and all of those barometers of healthy and livable society.

Are you doing something central, as in taking this water to the people that need it, in terms of pipelines?
Every one of the 15 water works we have done now has a five-kilometer reticulation pipeline network. They are turn-key projects. Each one of them runs two million gallons of water daily, five kilometers of pipeline network. That’s why it took this long to finish.

President Yar’Adua came into office with a seven-point agenda. Acting President Jonathan is being advised to reduce it to two, three or four. How many points’ agenda did you come into office with?
I didn’t have an agenda in that sense. My agenda first, is the manifesto of my party, the Action Congress. When you look at the manifesto of our party, if you put it next to the Millennium Developmental Goals, you will see that it will not differ in any substantial particular.

We address health care, free education, job provision, agricultural development and all of those basic things. They encapsulate the essential needs of man and we had, a 10-point agenda, which, was a compression of the reports that we compiled at the inception of the Tinubu administration. About 34 committees were set up. By the time I came and joined the government in 2002, towards the end of the first term of Governor Tinubu, we had compressed that into 10-point agenda. When you look at that, you’ll see that we are not significantly different from either the millennium development goal or the party manifesto. That way, we have encapsulated the expectation of the electorate and on the basis of this, we have continued to do what we do.

Let’s talk about opening up the Badagry axis. That was a statement you made sometimes ago, that development needs to move towards Badagry as a way of decongesting Lagos because of the tourist potentials.

Road is the most effective means of looking at the potentials of Badagry. Tourism, housing estate, a business centre are about destinations. If people cannot get to their destinations on time, they are not encouraged to do business there. Badagry road is about 61km; ideally travelling at about 80 to 100km per hour should not take beyond 30 to 40 minutes. But it takes two, three or sometimes five hours to drive/travel. So it can’t be an attractive destination until that road project is delivered.

So, that’s the main thing. Once that happens, the private sector will automatically respond to an infrastructure investment. Today, if you go to see what we have in Yaba in terms of road network, you would see that businesses are being turned around. Many of the old businesses are returning, property values have gone up. Now, office blocks are springing up there and this means that some people, who, ordinarily, would have opened offices in Ikoyi would decide to stay on the Mainland. Therefore, we can keep the traffic in those districts during business hours.

The same thing is happening in Apapa. New investments are being made, even as the road is still under construction. The same thing is happening along LASU/Iba road. Now people are beginning to take position. You will also see the same thing even in the rural areas, where we have started doing integrated road networks, drainages, hospitals, schools, so that people, who, ordinarily, wanted to live in rural areas, but who are forced to come look for education or healthcare, are being given their education and healthcare there. People are beginning to stay there.

Commercial activities are looking up. Many have got their transformers now; so they can do their basic processing without having to bring their goods and services into the city simply, as a matter of necessity. So, if you want to come into the city now, it’s a mater of choice, not because they are compelled to come and search for anything. Something will happen in Badagry, while something is happening in Alimosho presently, with all the road networks and all that.

Let’s talk about Oshodi. When Oshodi was being fixed, what was going on in your mind? Was there a time when you felt, perhaps, you should slow down and what were the challenges of fixing Oshodi?
We looked at so many options immediately after the BRT started. We realized that the BRT was not going to be sustainable unless we provided more roads, because we needed to expand the bus road network. We could not only work on Ikorodu road.

I knew that Agege motor road was there, because I knew the places as a child. I used to go there when I was a teenager; my grand parents lived there. I know there was nothing wrong with that road, except that some people had taken it over as a market. My colleagues and I were challenged. We wondered if we couldn’t find an answer to it.

We toyed with idea of doing a bus interchange there, which would cost several billions of naira because we saw that it was a transport hub. We also realized that even if we spent all of the money, that transport hall would soon be consumed by the loss of the use of the road. We also found out, during an enumeration, the number of people trading there, who were not as many as people trying to buy.

We said why couldn’t we relocate these people and build shops? We are building a new market now, but we have to start somewhere. We are also getting feedback of property depreciation in the environment. GRA property values were being threatened and people were already thinking perhaps, we should move out of Ikeja.

Those were the considerations that determined what happened in Oshodi and we said, look, we have to make a choice here between the interest of the larger group and the interest of the smaller group. Somehow, we found a balance and the smaller group had to be relocated, may be, with a little discomfort, but our choices here are made by the simple test of what would bring the greatest benefit to the greatest number.
That is a road where almost six million people travel through on a daily basis and a few hundred people had taken it over.

We found the answer by team work, by planning and right now, the market is almost completed and the people we find there will be the first beneficiaries of the market. It’s behind us as an image issue for our country. We think we have scored some positives, because that is where visitors see first when they come into the country and then the Lagos airport is the busiest one in this country, if not in the sub-region. I think that with time, the interception of works will improve because of what has happened there. And of course, so many things followed in Oshodi. Immediately, we monitored crime, refuse management, we monitored disease levels and everything just went down.

Within six weeks after we did it, the DPO in Oshodi said his cells were virtually empty. The refuse tonnage that were being gathered dropped by about 60 percent. Travel time, traffic moved from 20km/hour at rush hour to 40-69 km at rush hour: That has full effect on fuel wasted and burnt. The stand still traffic also has impact in money saved in people’s pockets.

The health benefit/health issues through the stress of daily traffic were adjusted. That place also served as warehouse for rodents, rats and all of the things that had the capacity to lead to an epidemic. So, for my colleagues and I, courage doesn’t mean the lack of fear. It means that in spite of that fear, you are able to go on with decency and I believe what we are doing is the right thing.

Would you complement that with looking at the airport road? The airport road, the gateway to Nigeria, is terrible. Are you going to take that on as well?
I like to discuss usually what I’ve done, or what we have started to do, not what we are planning to do. I’ll like to keep that close to my chest if you permit me. But we are looking at the whole of that.

There was a time the 57 LCDAs were an issue between you and the president. How was it resolved? And recently we read a commissioner said Lagos would need more CDAs.
Gov. Fashola
Photo: Sun Publishing

I think that issue was resolved at the Supreme Court, as at the time Lagos State government went to court during Tinubu’s time. The issue has been clearly stated that all what was done towards the creation of the LCDAs was valid and that it was not within the purview of any of the parties in dispute to take a unilateral action, such as seizing money or otherwise. Clearly, it was simply a matter that needed legislative action, as it were, to formalize a more formality that was left with the National Assembly. So that’s where the matter is.

I think that one recognizes that local governments are most important arms of government, in terms of impact on daily lives, and more importantly the fact that it brings the government closer to the people cannot be too often made. For example, a local government has the responsibility for sanitation, as its responsibilities, primary education, and primary health care. Primary education is the foundation to any child’s education. Once it’s wrong, it would be very difficult to correct.

That is where you learn to spell, read and to write, and that’s the responsibility of the local government. Primary health care is where you do all of your immunization, whooping cough, measles and all of that. That is what keeps the child alive in that early period; even conception, antenatal issues and all of that. So, you see how important those levels of governments are. We are battling with polio now, and the local governments have the ability to take us out of it as our local governments are doing.

There is also a strength and efficiency in number. Recently, our local governments decided to contribute to our Security Trust Fund; they decided to give us two vehicles each. Because we have 20 local governments, 37 local council development areas, we got 114 vehicles. If they were 20, we would have gotten 40 vehicles. That’s the efficiency it brings to governance and development. So, the need for more local governments cannot be too often made. I think that each state must be able to decide on how many it would need, based on the assessment of what its people want.

Let’s move to Lekki axis. When are we going to see that project completed also, what about the Lekki free trade zone? When would that be completed?
A lot of projects are going on in Lekki. There’s the Lekki free trade zone. The actual time line for the completion of the road is 2011. That’s the actual time we are to deliver the 49-km road. I must admit that we have lost that schedule. I just got a letter from the company that handles that schedule and we would have a meeting. But before the end of this year, I believe we would have the first 15km of that road behind us, and on the basis of that schedule, we would move forward.

So many factors contributed to that. First, was the need to relocate service cables belonging to Telecoms, PHCN, Buildings also have to be avoided. We also have to prepare and build alternative routes off the construction routes in order to manage time. So it’s a lot of process and we have to meet many stakeholders, one after the other.

There is a bridge to be expanded; we have to meet people to explain to them. As good citizens, they ultimately would give us their nod. That also happened along the line. A lot of work is going on off side. Putting them in place also requires us to manage and ensure that interests are appropriately represented and the facts are laid down for people to understand why we are going through what we are going through.

What we are going through is not different from what we went though while we were doing the first two km. The pain has eased; so we all have forgotten it. It’s the current pain we are feeling. We understand this and we are concerned about this and we are mindful of it. Moreso, we will continue to appeal to our people to bear with us, that we only mean to make it better. These are some of the discomforts that we have to go through.

These should have been done, may be, 30 years ago, but nobody probably anticipated the developmental explosion in Lekki that overwhelmed the size of the road. It was foresighted as at that time to open up that axis during the Jakande administration, but clearly, time has overtaken that angle. It’s our responsibility today to deal with the developmental pressures that have come upon that road. What would happen another 30 years when we would have gone would be the responsibility of whoever is privileged to be here.

The free trade zones are making progress. The global financial crisis has not stopped us. We are making progress with our partners, the Chinese. There have also been so much anchors; people have paid for land, have committed to invest there. We are at a stage now, where we are reviewing the work plan to be intensified with the construction of the infrastructure and all the industrial concerns have paid for land, as a basis to start their own development.

Water supply, road networks, telecoms service, power supply; we have a master plan. We are working with our contractors to see the cost of implementing. We are also talking to other investors who will think that the issues like power supply, water supply can be run by private sector for the entire estate, and anybody who uses it as a consumer. We don’t think that should be the responsibility of the government, to begin to manage electricity. A lot of work is going on and it’s really an industrial estate. It takes a whole lifetime to fully evolve.

The molue seems to have vanished in Lagos, but commercial motorcycles, popularly called Okadas, are on the increase. Do you envisage a Lagos without Okadas one day?
Each generation will come to terms with its own peculiar transport system. Look at that photograph, that’s Carter Bridge in 1966. That’s traffic on Carter Bridge in 1966, when I was three. Now we must see more cars, more people from what we see; they all are indices of prosperity. You won’t find cars in the desert. It’s a different problem there.

We all want the prosperity, economy and tourism boost. If you go to major tourist cities, except the modern ones like Dubai that do not have a large domestic population, there is a domestic population of about 1.5, 2.5 million people. Go to Brazil now at their tourist season, as they prepare for carnival and all of there. The people move bumper to bumper. It’s the same thing in London. The city of London, with the sub-way, its efficient buses and taxi systems has come up with congestion charge. We are yet to be there.

I think there would be new businesses as we go along. Okada also is not a charity, and they are responding to a huge service that this community is demanding, fast and efficient transport. There is a demand for it. It’s until we can provide the choice, the alternative faster ones, and expand the bus network that they would be taken care of. That’s what has happened with the molue. Many of the molue operators are the owners of BRT.

It’s not the government that owns the BRT; we just built the infrastructure; you own the buses and put them on the road. We regulate safety, uniforms and training of drivers. We would come to that as we go on. Our role here is to midwife developments, to midwife prosperity. And we move on. I’m sure we will get there and get the city of our dreams.

There are places we look up to. These are the places we go on holiday; that’s why we are lightening the whole city, beautifying the city and trying to give you at home what you find abroad. We are demonstrating simply that whatever happens anywhere in the world can happen here and that this is not a lost cause. But I believe that we must keep our essential character, the energy of Lagos.

So, I don’t see how we would have a Lagos without the man selling meat by the road side. All we insist is that he cleans it up. I cannot imagine Lagos without those women peeling their oranges, that is also part of the character of Lagos. You cannot imagine Lagos without the suya man at night, in Obalende, if you want to go there to eat barbecue meat. All we demand is that it is done properly. So in all of these things, we are committed to retain the essential characters of our state.

It is just like you go to night clubs and eat Sushi in Japan or McDonald in the U.S, we must preserve those interesting things that are ours. A woman selling groundnuts, roasting boli, a woman roasting corn has a place. We owe a duty to preserve them as the showpiece of who we are, our culture, the way we live, the way we eat. And at the same time having a modern network of infrastructure that competes with whatever you fan find anywhere in the world.

If you go to Spain, for example, in spite of all the campaign about animal rights, the Spanish won’t give up bull fighting. As much as Spain is a modern city, all of those things exist there.
If you go to places like Sardinia, in Italy, that’s where they do a lot of tuna fishing and whatever you say about the depleting level of tuna fish in the ocean, they would tell you this is the culture they have inherited from their ancestors and they cannot give it up.

You cannot ask some part of Asia not to eat shark in soup. So that is really trying to strike a balance. If you go to Cairo, for example, you will see the energy of Cairo and its modernity, but it keeps the blend of its old culture and at the same time it is modernized.

It is believed in certain quarters that you are placing a lot of emphasis on many things at the detriment of education in Lagos, considering that the state used to be at the forefront when it comes to the percentage of student passes in WAEC examination.

First and foremost, that is not that true. If you take a look at our budget over the years, you would see investment that goes into education. There is the Lagos Eko Project, a World Bank assisted project. Its purpose is to empower teachers in each classroom to be able to be like chief executives in each of their own classrooms, manage their needs for chalk, training materials, for damage which we would bring to the public domain very soon.

We also found out that the interaction is about decentralizing the educational system.
In the last 10 years, we have continued to strengthen the capacity of the educational sector. There was a time when principals could not rise beyond the office of the principal. Now, they can become permanent secretaries. That was the major welfare incentive of the previous administration. We continue to build on that. So what have we done?

We are sending teachers on training, providing them with new teaching materials, equipping laboratories, investing in books, bringing back leadership clubs; the Boy Scouts, Girls Guide. Those are the visible investments and things we have done to increase school enrolment, because we implement and measure how it is working.

What I see is that the educational sector that is not encouraging today, that you refer to, didn’t start yesterday or 10 years ago. They started well over 20 or 30 years ago. That’s the reality. So for you to begin to see the obvious turn-around, it will take some time, but the investment continues. Today, in the basic subjects, every child in the Lagos public schools has books, which they once didn’t have. While we were building classrooms, building new schools, wet set a target. But we can say that it is quicker to address other smaller problems, because building a house, building a class would take several months.

However, there are quick fixes that we can do. One of the quick fixes we identified late last year, which we have started implementing, is desk and chairs for the teachers and all the pupils. We said to ourselves, that whatever it takes, before the end of this year no child or teacher in any of our public schools would be without a desk and a chair.

The production has started. We have taken delivery of the first 4, 000, and the next 60,000 will be delivered next week. But before the end of 2010 that would be a problem behind us, and all we would be left with will be the number of classrooms that need be fixed and the number of teachers that needs to be trained. We are measuring the result every year and sometimes, we look only at how many people passed, but that is not the only measure of success.

Tidal waves during recently washed on-shore 10 vessels in Lagos and the DG of NIMASA said communities, like Ilase could go under water. What does this mean and aren’t you worried?
First, the whole world is now focused on climatic problem characterized by all you and I have learnt: rising water level, depleting of the Ozone layer, impact of green house gas emission, pollution and all of that. It’s not a local problem; it’s global. Yesterday (Monday) at a meeting I asked my team to go and check whether the ice and snow in Washington and all of that were monitored, because when the ice melts, it goes into the water body across the world, including the place we stand.

So it’s coming here. So we must clean out our own drainages. But the reality is that each season brings its challenges. When there is hurricane in America, in 10 days you would see the high level on the lagoon. You will see the waves and tide rise. But we are containing it and also consulting with one of the best marine engineering services from the Netherlands, who studying and giving us option of preparing Lagos 50 years from now. We are mindful of the climate and global challenges we face. In some places, we will have what we call plasmodia, but we believe the place has been cleaned sufficiently.

Like I said, if we live close to the coast, our responsibility is to continue to do our best and to make our environment better. Our drainages must be cleaned out; our people also have the responsibility not to dump dirt in the drains so that the drains can serve them when they need them. A lot of people have foretold and predicted that some cities and states will be submerged by certain dates in the future. I do not have such prediction from what our experts have told me. What is on the ground, which is indisputable, is that we are very close to the water, but engineering, science and proper planning can keep us safe.

Though, such a disaster has not happened to us and will not happen through our prayers and consciousness, but we are not riding our lucks. We need our people to understand that it is worth praying hard. If we look at places, like Gbagada, which is an example of a sub-merged area, we would see that it has dried up because of the strong drainage we did there. Also, looking at the Dolphin Estate, near Ije, you would find out that the old canal had to be by-passed to transfer the water to the lagoon. Go to Idi Araba, where there was the famous River LUTH. Go and take a look at what has tremendously happened there. River LUTH has been in existence since I was a child, but the problem has been solved. We are going from place to place, in like manner. It is a process and we think we can get it done right.

We have the drainage master plan for the state and we are addressing these issues based on how our resources can allow us run it. We are making progress at the local government level. Sometime last year, all the local government chairmen were asking same questions and I told them the same story that our people needed to support this course of maintaining the drainages. While some use the drainages as refuse dump grounds, some other people build on these drainages. These should stop. We need to get the water out of the system, which is the final drainage.

I also think it is important to make this point clear. The sea is the final drainage; the water in it does not disappear. When the water goes out from your house, it goes directly to the gutter and to the canal. Finally, the water leaves for the sea/lagoon and to the Atlantic. These are the final drainages. So, once the water level at any of those points is high, there is nothing any human being can do about it, until the water level reduces.

Lagos normally experience flood in months like July, when there is intensive rainfall. Everywhere is submerged by flood. It is quite easier to compare the flood in Lagos with that of Philippines, where people run here and there. At least, we deserve some credit, because in four hours, what you see as submerge would have disappeared. At that time, scientifically, there was nothing anybody else can do. The sea is locked because the level of the water in it has risen far beyond its level. That is what happens, until it goes away. The same applies to the Lagoon.

If we know all these dangers, why go ahead with the Eko Atlantic project?
Eko Atlantic project was conceived in order to save Ikoyi and Victoria Island. In 1999 and 2000, when there was heavy downpour, Victoria Island and Ikoyi were usually victims of flood. Many property were destroyed, as water penetrated so many homes. The last administration committed itself to finding a lasting solution to the flooding rather than pumping in sand.

We later found an engineering solution. You find that instead of sand being washed away, the sea, in return, dumps sands. What Lagos has lost in terms of its coastline is almost four kilometers in the sea, and that is what the Eko Atlantic project plans to reclaim. At the back of the shoreline will be a defence wall for the whole state and that now gives us a new real estate close to the sea to develop.

I must say emphatically that there is nothing wrong with land reclamation. The whole of Singapore is virtually reclaimed land; virtually 85 per cent was reclaimed land. If there were no land reclamation, there would not have been a place like Victoria Island. If there were no reclamation, we would not have the Tin Can Island. Beachland Estate is another example of a reclaimed land.

Has the legal matter in the Eko Atlantic Project been resolved, because the contractors were in court?
If the matter has been subverted between two parties to court, I think the appropriate thing is allowing the court make its determination. When it comes to court processes, as a lawyer, if I don’t see what the processes are, I cannot commit advice on speculation. In other words, I like to see facts.

At least three newspapers named you as man of the year. How do you keep your head and how does it feel being The Sun Man of the Year?
As a saying that a golden fish has no hiding place, every cat will come after you. But I think it is our responsibility to show to our people not how many awards you got, but how you make their lives better. Whatever happens, I have coined a phrase with my colleagues that the only reward we will get for hard work is not only awards but more work. It raises the bar of expectation on us, but we see that bar of expectation as the wages, not as a governor.

I told my colleagues that any time the people tell us that there is still work for us to do or there is this and that, we should see it as a vote of confidence on our ability to do it, which is why we are asked to perform the task. So, that is the way I think I can explain that. Often, I ask myself why us? I cannot see myself the way people see me. It is only people who give the awards that know what you do. As for me, in our work, we still have a long way up. We have just started.

What kind of Lagos would you like to leave when you complete your service?
The Lagos that will be able to actualize its huge potential; the Lagos that will be a state, a home for all those who choose to make it their home, a city-state where we would be able to fend for ourselves.

Specifically, what prepared you for this position?
It is very easy to remember. It is also simple to find answer to, just that sometimes I don’t know how things happen. But the only thing I believe is that God is the giver of life, the author of our faith and I believe that things happen only because He willed it to happen. I believe whatever may have prepared me is that every step and everything in my life has happened because God wanted it to happen.
What are the major challenges of governing Lagos? Somebody said money is not the problem in Lagos but how to spend it.

Well, that is an impression I would want to correct. To say that Lagos State has problem of spending money is not correct. Lagos, compared to other states, was ranked as disadvantaged, in terms of funding when you look at what we earn every month and break it down against the responsibilities of our over 18 million people it caters for. Therefore, there are many states that are richer than Lagos. It is not that we are not as rich as people think, but we are only able to manage efficiently the little we get. So we can provide and protect as many people who choose to make this place their home.

When you look at what is happening in some cities across the world, you will understand the pressure we are faced here. Every success we record, whether to improve the quality of education, transport, security and all these is multiplied tenfold here. When you look at the branch network of a bank in Lagos, it is probably more than its branch network for the rest of the country. So, if you look at the number of school and hospital enrolment, the public service size, the business size, it is a huge responsibility. More so, looking after 18 million people, who look to us every day for the expression of their hopes and aspiration is a 24-hour job.

What is your typical day like, being a governor looking after 18 million people, a daddy and husband?
Well, as a daddy, a husband, I must give the credit to my wife, having done a marvelous job of keeping the home and keeping the children. I couldn’t thank her enough for doing that. My children are also great. They talk to me and they have shown so much understanding. My day starts roughly around 6 and 7am and ends between 2 and 3am.

Do you still find time to watch football?
Yes, it comes at a cost. I learn how to plan my time. I keep the television set on most of the time. But to watch a match now, I must feel a deep sleep, because most of these matches are just repetition. So, I contend myself mainly with the result of the match, to ensure my team is still doing well.

No shaking is a popular expression in Lagos. Can we say no shaking on the political turf?
Well, let me say that the matter is one that requires continuous understanding. But as a measure of information, I want to say to those that have expressed concern that the political stability of Lagos in not in doubt. I like to conclude by thanking you people very much as well as congratulate Mr. Tayo Aderinokun, with whom I have the privilege and honour of sharing the award.


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