[size=14pt]Fashola: The man who would tame Nigeria’s megacity
~ By Matthew Green (first published on August 7, 2009 3:25 pm, FT Magazine when Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, was Lagos State Governor from May 29, 2007 to May 29, 2015, He is currently the Federal Minister of Power, Works and Housing.)[/size]

One Sunday afternoon in Lagos, a man leapt out into Akin Adesola, the main street on Victoria Island, and flagged down my car. He yanked open the door, swung into the front passenger seat and barked “drive”.

Anger radiated from him like heat. He wore no uniform and carried no gun, but desperation imbued him with an iron authority. All the pent-up frustrations of the megacity seemed to flow through him like an electric current.
He whipped out a tattered paper and jabbed his finger at a list of violations – I had failed to stop at a white line. He said I had better pay the fine now or go to the station where his superior would be less inclined to leniency.

“What makes you think you can come to my country and break our laws?” he spat. His eyes bulged and beads of sweat glistened on his shaven head. He stared through the windshield at the passing cars. “I should not be out here directing traffic,” he said. “I am a graduate.”

A hostage in my own car, I groped for the most obvious response to this piece of news.

“What subject?” I asked.

“Psychology.”

“So you know Freud?”

“Yes!” he said. “The founding father!” My captor had cracked a smile. The mask slipped. We talked for another 20 minutes and I learnt his name was Olabode – Ola for short. He let me go, gave me his mobile number and waved me on, smiling. As I pulled away, he resumed his vigil from a kiosk on the central reservation, waiting for another chance.

Such encounters are the stuff of everyday life in Lagos, a city defined by hustle. You can see it in the traffic cops shaking down drivers for bribes, in the legions of youths braving the fumes of the “go-slow” traffic jams to sell scratch cards for mobile phones, and in the armies of motorbike taxis careering through the streets. The fabric of the city seems to defy order. A seemingly infinite low-rise checkerboard of mottled concrete, rusted tin roofs and bus-choked, cratered streets, the city of perhaps 18 million ­people – the biggest conurbation in sub-Saharan Africa – appears to have ­succumbed to the early stages of a virulent urban disease. The vast ­majority of people in the city lack access to adequate housing, sanitation or jobs. Travelling relatively short distances can be a teeth-grinding, hours-long ordeal. One Nigerian blogger put the case in eloquent, if extreme, terms in a January post: “A landing in Lagos … is an entrance into Dante’s city of Woe.”

The slumscapes of Lagos are a powerful portent of the extremes of ­poverty and overcrowding to come as the trend for rapid urbanisation continues across the developing world. Nigeria’s commercial capital will be the third-largest city on the planet by 2015 after Tokyo and Mumbai, according to UN projections. Already, half of humanity lives in cities, and within two decades, it will be almost 60 per cent. Millions of people may find that their home towns start to look more like Lagos, before Lagos looks more like the rest of the world.

Yet it is this beast that Babatunde Fashola, the new governor of Lagos State, has made it his mission to transform. Since coming to power in May 2007, the soft-spoken lawyer has launched a programme to build new highways, clear chaotic markets and encourage multi-billion-dollar investments in real estate. A swelling army of floppy-hatted sweepers is ­sprucing up the streets. Former street toughs have been given jobs as traffic wardens. Fashola wants to turn Lagos from an urban dystopia into a model of civic pride. He hopes that even its notoriously frenetic inhabitants will start to feel a little, well, calmer.

Lagosians have heard such plans before. What is remarkable this time is that many people – rich and poor – believe that Fashola could really take the city’s destiny in hand.

. . .
A few months after meeting Olabode, I gave him a call. Most ­foreigners in Lagos live among the enclaves of privilege at the tips of irregularly shaped peninsulas abutting the Atlantic shore – the Victoria Island business district and the colonial-era suburb of Ikoyi. Ola lives in Oshodi, one of the hundreds of interlocking neighbourhoods that sprawl across the Nigerian mainland. Fashola has chosen his area as one of the first targets in his plan to bring the megacity to heel.

To get to Oshodi from Ikoyi, you must cross the Third Mainland Bridge, a 12km concrete serpent that swerves around the edge of the city and over Lagos lagoon. On weekends, when traffic is light, riding this stretch of road is like plunging on to a rollercoaster; the sudden expanse of sea and sky feels almost sublime after the crush of the city. From its crest, you can see Makoko, a slum-on-stilts, spilling into the water. On the bridge above the smoke-shrouded rooftops, a trio of Fashola’s cleaners swept the gutters.

My taxi reached the other side and swerved around three tyres placed in the road to stop cars running over a body – a dead man was curled into a foetal position on the tarmac, and was naked. Unfazed by the sight – not uncommon in a city where environmental services are, to say the least, overstretched – the driver, named Jimoh, extolled Fashola’s achievements. ­“Fashola, good-oh!” he said. (Lagosians often add an “oh” sound at the end of a word for emphasis, a spillover from the Yoruba language.) “Lagos is now changing-oh, because of Fashola. Everywhere is clean. Before, road is not good at all. Now, no hold-up from the main road, no hold-up at all!”

We turned into the labyrinth of Oshodi. For years, the area was famous as a hang-out for thugs, hustlers and thieves. Battered yellow buses, ­hawkers, motorbike-taxi drivers and thousands of people would crowd on to the highway in a scene resembling a slow-motion riot. Ola lived in a two-storey block located a few minutes’ walk from the maelstrom, sharing two rooms with his wife and two children. To enter, you crossed a plank over an open drain and climbed a dank staircase.

Ola was relaxed although seemed a little embarrassed by the circumstances of our first encounter. His eyes still looked weary, but he was a different man from the enraged official I’d confronted during my brief abduction. He led me from his home to the highway.

The Oshodi of old had vanished. Gone were the market stalls that once crowded the central reservation, leaving a scar of bare earth. Traffic flowed freely. Ola pointed at a stream of people walking in an orderly line over a pedestrian bridge where once they would have hurled themselves pell-mell across the road. On the flyover above, passengers waited by special lanes that ensured the shiny new buses avoided the “go slows”. Blasts from horns still rent the air, but the once-permanent jam had cleared.

“Before, very dirty, stinking!” Ola said, sweeping his arms on either side of the expressway as the buses and cars roared past. “You see it is very neat now!”

The faster flow had some unfortunate side-effects. A crowd gathered around a man who sat panting on the ground after being knocked down by a motorbike taxi. Further along, youths were manhandling an old woman into a bus commandeered to take her to hospital after a similar spill. Ola was disappointed with the casualties. “They failed to realise that this place is now an express,” he tutted.

Oshodi’s transformation was not due to some spontaneous outburst of civic duty. As we watched, a convoy of nine new Toyota Hilux pick-ups swept up the road, executed a U-turn, and parked under the bridge with military precision. The words “Lagos Clean Up” were painted on their sides. Police bearing AK-47 rifles – and some wearing battlefield-style webbing – jumped out. One officer carried a long cane. They would ensure that none of the stallholders crept back.

Out of sight of the police, a trader named Austin Igbegbu described how the security forces had arrived before dawn to raze the market. Some ­hawkers had found space in a newly built precinct, but he was now selling shirts from a sack. “I’ve been in Lagos for 31 years, we’ve seen both military regimes and civilian regimes; people in Lagos never experienced such hardship,” he said. Obi Ifedinma, a woman trader, agreed: “Fashola has ­forgotten the people that voted for him.” Then a group of men, suspicious of my note taking, began to walk towards us and Ola hustled me away.

Fashola likes to tour his city. He conducts frequent inspections of the sites where bulldozers and mechanical diggers are busy bending Lagos State to his will. Given the level of brute force required to realise this vision in places such as Oshodi, I was curious to see what kind of reception he would receive. I fell in at the back of the governor’s motorcade for one of his excursions.

Fashola has banned the use of the sirens that the high-rollers in ­Nigerian business and politics often employed to push their way through traffic jams. His convoy of some 19 vehicles, including pick-ups full of police in bulletproof vests and helmets, sped through the city in silence. He rode in a black Range Rover with the plate “LasGo-1.”

Sweeping through a typical Lagos landscape of ramshackle homes and smouldering rubbish, the entourage reached the site of the new Agboroko-Igboelerin road. Diggers had ripped the façades from breeze-block houses, exposing living rooms to the sky as they cleared the way for the new highway. Dressed in a white kaftan and a cap, Fashola stepped on to the dirt to meet dozens of waiting locals. Waving their arms, the crowd chanted “Baba Oh, Baba-Oh”. One man wore a T-shirt bearing the words: “Fashola – Mega Governor”. Surrounded by a gaggle of reporters and photographers, the governor made a show of rapidly consulting a chart proffered by his commissioner in charge of roads. Minutes later, the convoy rolled away.

A pair of young men squeezed on to the back of a motorbike-taxi to provide a makeshift escort. “We like him very well,” said Raman Akibu, who was among those giving the most vigorous cheers. “He constructs a lot of things for us.”

Fashola’s popularity is directly proportional to the amount of concrete his workmen have poured. His very visible achievements in terms of ­starting roads and bridges have created a sense among many Lagosians that – finally – they have a leader who is capable of delivering lasting, positive change. This is a novelty in a city with a sometimes difficult ­history. A staging post for the transatlantic slave trade, contemporary accounts described the original settlement as a festering, malarial heap plagued by intrigue, fetish worship and human sacrifice. Captain John Adams, in his Sketches Taken During Ten Voyages to Africa Between the Years 1786 and 1800, wrote of one “horrid custom” in particular: impaling a young woman on a stake – alive – to placate the rain goddess.

. . .
I met Fashola in his office in Ikeja on the mainland. A wall-mounted plasma TV screen was tuned to CNN. Piles of documents crowded his desk, as well as a recent copy of the journal, Foreign Affairs. Unlike many Lagosians – whose rapid-fire pidgin English itself seems to reflect the city’s helter-skelter pace – Fashola speaks in measured, lawyerly tones. He eschews the kind of flamboyant hand gestures employed by many more boisterous politicians, yet is publicity-conscious: a government camera crew filmed the interview.

“The dream would be that it will be a much more functional city, a more business-friendly city, a safer city, and where people can find not only work, but also leisure,” he said, when I asked him what he hoped to achieve in Lagos. “The philosophy that guides this government now [is] how to make the infrastructure catch up.”

The roots of Lagos’s problems are easy to diagnose: explosive ­population growth has far outstripped the city’s ability to cope. Post-independence political turmoil and long periods of military rule stymied effective planning. The oil boom of the 1970s, which flooded Nigeria with petrodollars, spurred a temporary surge in public works, but the pace soon slowed. A magnet for migrants from across Nigeria and west Africa, Lagos ­developed organically, oblivious to planning.

Counting population in Nigeria is a controversial and often highly subjective exercise, but Fashola believes the city was home in the mid-1970s to about 2.5 million people. Figures vary widely, but the UN says that by next year the headcount could hit 20 million. ­Fashola dropped the following bombshell so calmly it would have been easy to miss: he believes the city’s optimum population is 40 million.

For an outsider, it can be hard to grasp why so many Lagosians have so much faith in their governor’s ability to transform the city given the manifest depths of its problems. The answer lies in a confluence of personal and political factors that perhaps reveals as much about the way Nigeria works – or doesn’t – as it does about whether Fashola can succeed. The son of a prominent family from the Yoruba community that dominates Lagos, ­Fashola has acquired a reputation that embodies the very qualities ­Nigerians often complain have been lacking in their leaders: technocratic ­competence, commitment to results and, above all, integrity. While no administration in Nigeria is immune from allegations of ­cronyism and subterranean deal-making, Fashola has managed to avoid the whiff of grand-scale corruption that has tainted many of Nigeria’s former state governors.

His personal appeal should not, however, obscure the fact that the general elections that brought the current crop of state governors to power in 2007 were among the least credible ever conducted in Nigeria, with many voters choosing to stay at home rather than risk violence at polling ­stations. Contests in many parts of Nigeria were essentially rigging competitions held between rival groups of thugs. There were fewer reports of abuses on polling day in Lagos, which is dominated by Fashola’s opposition Action Congress party. Yet as in other states, powerful political ­figures tend to play a prominent role in ensuring the emergence of their successors. After being anointed by his predecessor, Bola Tinubu, for whom he served as chief of staff, Fashola’s ­victory seemed assured.

Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3d3209aa-8225-11de-9c5e-00144feabdc0.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Matthew Green was the FT’s west Africa correspondent. He takes up a new post in Pakistan this month. For more on Nigeria, see the FT’s Nigeria special report 2009, www.ft.com/reports/nigeria-2009.

You expect me, or any nairalander to read this?

You must be on a long thing......

Lagos has indeed been blessed with what most other states in Nigeria lack : 17 solid years of uninterrupted good governance.

What an interesting read. Sometimes I read on NL by some set of folks that Fashola was over-hyped in Lagos and was a media governor.

I just grin at the clowns who've never stepped into Lasgidi.

OfficialAwol:
You expect me, or any nairalander to read this?

You must be on a long thing......

They are reading it, because they are not lazy members like some people we know comment first without even reading.

Fashole


A great thief

What Nigeria lacks, is what Lagos has: Continuity.
That's the reason why for the foreseeable future, every governor in Lagos would look excellent.

I'm highly critical of how people report issues. TRANSFORMED in what way? If Fasholas effort in lagos deserves commendation then he should be commended.
With new roads built, oshodi cleared, bus stops erected etc all in all the infrastructures put in place wouldn't amount to that sweeping statement of transformation.
The lagos we know haven't change one bit: the extortion by area boys at bus stops; the dirt and blocked gutters; the worsening traffic jams; the continued indiscipline by road users n general public; beggars nuisance; the noise n pollution; the no solution floodings; the.... it goes on and on and that is the Lagos we've always known and are still seeing. Lagos hasn't bn transform one bit.
The skyline hasn't change
The ground level hasn't change
The air quality isn't better
Lagosians attitudes hasn't change

So where comes the TRANSFORMED. In fact lagos is as enmeshed in its old self as ever.

Where are the IPOD people I thought most of them said Fashola is over-rated. I do leave them to continue swimming in their ocean of ignorance because they are all blinded by hate, nothing you say will make them love Fashola and the most annoying tin is that most of them have never been to lag.
Ambode is continuing from where Fashola stopped...That is how a good Government should be run.

E try

Fashola did well with lagos development but could work well with power transformation.

Quite lengthy not for the lazy folks to read.

tinkinjow:
I'm highly critical of how people report issues. TRANSFORMED in what way? If Fasholas effort in lagos deserves commendation then he should be commended.
With new roads built, oshodi cleared, bus stops erected etc all in all the infrastructures put in place wouldn't amount to that sweeping statement of transformation.
The lagos we know haven't change one bit: the extortion by area boys at bus stops; the dirt and blocked gutters; the worsening traffic jams; the continued indiscipline by road users n general public; beggars nuisance; the noise n pollution; the no solution floodings; the.... it goes on and on and that is the Lagos we've always known and are still seeing. Lagos hasn't bn transform one bit.
The skyline hasn't change
The ground level hasn't change
The air quality isn't better
Lagosians attitudes hasn't change
So where comes the TRANSFORMED. In fact lagos is as enmeshed in its old self as ever.

I get your point. But give him credit please. He did do a great job. But it might not be upto your expectations though. Ambode continued where he stopped. That's why continuation is good in governance. Many roads were repaired. New ones were built. And the issue of flooding was addressed. You can see the big water ways constructed for the floods in some areas. He can't cover every area and Ambode is touching where Fashola didn't touch. Ambode himself can't touch every area. Let's hope the next governor will do that. It's all about continuity. At lease I know of some areas personally where flood is no more the problem.

And you are funny oooo, how do you expect him to change the attitude of Lagosians. Make he rewire their brain?

Nice

Recycling 2009 news item, which was most likely PAID for with taxes of hard working Lagosians, to launder the fraudulent dirty image of Barawo Rogue Fashole innit


www.nairaland.com/attachments/2776311_borehole_jpeg6982552b3aa8ea67bec1da4c0172b398



www.nairaland.com/attachments/2776329_lagosprojects2_jpega666e650b9fc5a14f04fa6a8ba0d8a3d

Eko oni Baje woooo!

He is on a mission of restoration.

Trash... Let's stop celebrating mediocrity in Naija.. This is why this reckless politicains take the populace for granted.. Lagos has far more potential & BRF didn't do anything spectacular... This we have come to realize after his 8 years as governor.. Lagos is a modern day ghetto, public infrastructure is zero, open sewage/gutters, bad waste management, lax public servants..

I expected an informed man like BRF to have laid the framework for an efficient metro system in Lagos, a city of this population can not thrive well without metro regardless of the KMs of new road built, but even a tram line has taken 9 years to construct & still not fully functional...

Them never see anything , Fashola would transform Nigeria by 2019 in roads and power, he go do una Igbos like film trick. Wait for it

God bless Fashola

GOD bless PMB

God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria

Ogbeche77:
Trash

...........that should be handled by LAWMA, surely.

eaglechild:
We can't complete Lagos light rail project

We obviously can't complete Lekki international phantom airport.

And you will be the biggest fool to think that we can complete Eko Atlantic.

Use your head people where do you think we are getting all the money we are using to sponsor Buhari


www.nairaland.com/attachments/2079192_fasholaa_jpegfc425dbc9482db4d2098e4dd5e8bee75

..............and the man was duly corruptly compensated with three ministerial portfolios to STEAL and loot to his delight in recovering his personal investment for the success of the perpetual failure of an "expired" leader.

acunon:
Fashola did well with lagos development but could work well with power transformation.

I see that you also bought into the propaganda paper development.
Sorry to disappoint you, bro.



www.nairaland.com/attachments/1964370_sku2_jpege1ebe4de4329955b7ec99f84493ba009




www.nairaland.com/attachments/1964371_sku3_jpegc43fc3a60bbe93a19044cd6322b91898

In 17 years (1999-2016) the JagbaJantis crew has been ruining Lagos state education with only 2,000 public schools today out of a total 14,000 in the state. The 12,000 private schools are largely UNSUPERVISED and not monitored.

http://nigeriavillagesquare.com/forum/main-square/84093-only-2-000-schools-belong-lagos-state-government.html


This ruinous record of the Thief'nubu cabal has been our lamentable lot despite:

- Annual budget increased over 10 times from N42 billion in 2000 to N489.69 billion in 2015. The state budget has been consistently above N450 billion since 2011.
- Annual IGR increased over 53 times from N7.2 billion in 1999 to N384.26 billion in 2013.

http://businessdayonline.com/2014/09/nbs-data-show-lagos-outperforms-13-other-states-in-igr/#.VR56mNzF82E


-World Bank $90 million education loan for which Fashola said no FoI in Lagos when requested how he spent the money on the 2,000 public schools. Understandably so



www.nairaland.com/attachments/1875047_img2014111800173_jpeg9b1c3e1b830058e00636bea988489243




How did we proud inheritors of Awo's sterling legacy allow ourselves to be enslaved by this cabal?
Why did we let our INDIVIDUAL selfishness and greed bring us so low that we are content with PRIVILEDGE crumbs from Bourdillon rather than our rights to COLLECTIVE well being?

Story story.

OfficialAwol:
You expect me, or any nairalander to read this?

You must be on a long thing......

He who does not read is worse off than he who cannot read.

Read my dear! Read!!!

Na lie, na w develop lagos, na we the flat headers, developer of the universe. Meanwhile, am back from controversial ban for weeks. This is the 3rd time of getting banned so am not scared. Ban to be continue, I will continue to talk to anyone anyhow. Lala, get that. Eko ti a o ni baje o. I know some ppl will be sad cos of this dis morning.

anonimi:

I see that you also bought into the propaganda paper development.
Sorry to disappoint you, bro.
www.nairaland.com/attachments/1964370_sku2_jpege1ebe4de4329955b7ec99f84493ba009
www.nairaland.com/attachments/1964371_sku3_jpegc43fc3a60bbe93a19044cd6322b91898

[size=14pt]You have a big problem with logical understanding.
You don't know Lagos.
The Financial Times reporter spent months in Lagos and visited many of the places before writing his report. But you did not even read it before posting your ignorant comment.[/size]

You copy and paste photographs of few isolated cases of the failures of few Chairmen of LGAs in Lagos State and want to blame Fashola for that?
What percent of such cases exist compared to the overall development of Lagos State when Fashola was the Governor?

I was born and bred in Lagos and worked as UNICEF Consultant, field officer for an NGO that I have to survey every LGA and also preached as a street and public transport bus evangelist for 11 years on "Molue" buses in the state. So, I know the evolution and transformation of Lagos from 1967 to date.

Lagos is the 5th biggest economy in Africa and the largest megacity in the continent with the highest GDP.

Please, read and watch the video.
Transforming The Informal Sector: The Lagos Example
http://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2014/12/31/transforming-the-informal-sector-the-lagos-example/

[size=14pt]
The Lagos example can bail Nigeria out of its economic woes.
~ Emir of Kano, Alhaji Muhammad Sanusi.[/size]



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbsdLI8kaWc

It is not a coincidence that our only functioning state has never been governed by Pdp