The Fashola Revolution
Review

Title: The Fashola Revolution

Author: Charles Afe Ikhaghe

Reviewer: Banji Ojewale

Publisher: Media Mark Lithographic Comp. Ltd

No of Pages:





In the fable of the blind men attempting a description of the elephant after an encounter, none can capture the full picture of what the beast looks like. Each relates only the aspect of the numerous physical features of the forest giant he has touched. Inhibited in movement by their blindness, the men confine themselves to only one part of the animal. They can’t go round to fully appreciate the elephant as will one with his full sense of seeing.

So one of them speaks glowingly of the mammal as possessing a flap-like ear wide enough for three blind men to sleep in. Another disagrees and says the elephant has a device (trunk), which lifts him momentarily to a dizzying height. The third dismisses these claims. He presents the elephant as an animal with such mammoth feet that it is a wonder the ground on which it stands doesn’t cave in!

The dilemma of the men in the fable approximates that which most people face when assessing Lagos, Nigeria’s most-populous and sophisticated megapolis.

Playing the blind man’s buff recently, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) aired a three-part serial on Lagos, which showed slums undergoing changes being put in place by the state government. The BBC saw only the poor areas under transformation.

Meanwhile, a group, The True Face of Lagos is bogged in the mud of old Lagos, some of which it is scooping and hurling at Governor Babatunde Fashola.

But whereas she fabled blind men may be pardoned on account of their physical handicap, the true-life BBC team, True Face of Lagos group and all others playing games with the reality of changes in Lagos would need real hammering.

One such structure on those ignoring the changes in Lagos is this book, The Fashola Revolution written by Charles Afe Ikhaghe. The author, a media practitioner, who has lived in Lagos for decades isn’t impressed about the effort to discountenance the strides of transformation by the administration of Fashola.

He says he has in his memory what the state looked like in the past a dour; chaotic and near hopeless setting. Those who ran its governments before 1999 went and came, effecting no major changes for unborn generations to index their achievements as a paradigm of governance. For him the real transformation actually started with the Bola Tinubu administration, the visioner and the architect of the New Lagos that Fashola is actualising and building. The author sees only a forlorn past that reminds you of the Dark Ages of European History. He emerged from the Lagos version and can tell the story of the former Nigerian capital of the past without resorting to history books or the account of the newspapers of the day. Ikhaghe appears “to say that yesterday’s Lagos is still quite fresh in his memory.

But not so present as to make him ignore the more forceful reality of the Lagos of today and the man behind it all. An overwhelmed Ikhaghe describes it as the Fashola Revolution.

His testimony is this: “The Fashola Revolution is about the spontaneous reaction of people in Lagos, in Nigeria and across the world to Governor Fasholas Administration’s fantastic development of Lagos in several areas particularly education, road, transportation, environment management and physical planning, health, security, food security, shelter, power and water supply, employment generation, revenue enhancement, etc. It is to inspire several others coming behind to emulate the step of Fashola for the greater uplift of humankind. It is an incontestable fact that Fashola has written his name in gold.”

Pictures and statements of facts from credible and prominent Nigerians don’t lie. So page after page the author relishes the reader with comments on Fashola by such eminent persons as the Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka; Mrs. Barbara Naomi King, widow of Dr. Martin Luther King; Pastor E. A. Adeboye, Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau State, Emeka Anyaoku, ex - Commonwealth scribe, Abubakar Yesufu, President of the League of Patriotic Lawyers and a host of others.

But the Lagos State Commissioner for Information, Opeyemi Bamidele, who wrote the foreword, gives a wider dimension of what the Fashola Revolution has in store for Nigeria. He declares in subtle prophecy, “, it is indisputable that the socio-political landscape of Lagos State from May 200 till date has been greatly influenced by the thoughts, visions and activities of the state governor, Babatunde Fashola, who has demonstrated in word and action that the Nigerian dream is not impossible after all. The administration of Fashola has been widely acclaimed for embarking on a number of programmes with potential for short and long-term positive influence on the emergence of a credible world-class megacity state. There is no gainsaying the fact that efforts of the administration in turning vital sectors of the state around with such time are being acknowledged jar and wide.”

The book closes on an expressive note with more than forty full-colour pictures of the story of a transformed Lagos still undergoing more changes preparing for delivery to the future. The Fashola Revolution represents a monumental, incontrovertible evidence that an all - encompassing renaissance is in full sail in Lagos and that unlike the hopeless conditions in Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, residents of Lagos are savouring the sweet presence of a beautiful one!