*FOOD FOR THOUGHT - IS LAGOS NOW ELDORADO?*

For the many touting Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s “performance” in Lagos as evidence he will transform Nigeria into paradise if he becomes president, a little question - IS LAGOS NOW ELDORADO?

What has Tinubu achieved in Lagos? The way we go on about this thing, you would think Lagos has become Eldorado, the mythical golden city of unmatched riches and splendor. This is the same way some people tried hard to convince us that Nigeria was Eldorado under GEJ! When are we going to learn as a people?

Many of my friends and colleagues travel regularly and know the standard by which development and progress ought to be measured. But many mouth something about progress being an incremental process. But any progress you can’t achieve incrementally in 23 years, having turned the state into a super efficient money minting machine, you will NEVER achieve! TWENTY THREE YEARS!!! How long did it take Dubai to be transformed from barren desert to international spectacle please?

So in Lagos, where is our mass transit system, the type that accelerates progress and boosts the economy of any city as large as Lagos?
Why is building ONE rail line taking almost 15 years so far and looking far fetched still?
How many times in the last 15 years have we incoherently attempted to ban Okada in Lagos without success AND without providing any alternative solution to the problems Okadas address?
Where are the IPPs that could have transformed the power situation of the state?
What is the condition of our public hospitals and primary healthcare centers?
How about the schools?
Please ask people who work in education based NGOs⁩ to share some of their experiences going to public schools that are not on major highways and trunk B roads in Lagos. It is a puzzling maze of mediocrity and squalor.

The level of development Lagos has experienced in the last 19 years is nowhere near the amount of money it has raised from IGR in same period. I drive around Lagos a lot and I know what I see once you leave the major roads. The poor state of roads and social services is disgraceful.
What about LG autonomy?
What’s the situation?
Tinubu still decides who will be your LG chairman till tomorrow but what’s the outcome of that?
How has this resulted in good governance in our neighborhoods?
What about the state judiciary?
Are they an oasis of legal administrative excellence using the latest technology and innovation to ensure fast paced delivery of justice? I have experienced both margistrate and State High Courts first hand in the last 8 years and I tell you, it’s all a joke and a charade. Any progress there might be is very tokenistic, slow and labored. The fundamental rot you see in the judiciary all over the country is precisely same in Lagos.

These are the indicators we should measure progress with, not that Wempco Road, or Funso Williams Avenue or Gerrard and Glover or Akin Adesola and Adeola Odeku were tarred. Or that the floors of LASUTH, Gbagada GH or Ifako Ijaiye GH have been tiled and the walls painted.

A man that could not transform the fundamental development indicators in a state he has controlled for 23 years; a man that has a development master plan he is supposedly using; and a man that cannot use lack of adequate financial resources as excuse surely cannot deliver desperately needed development on a far more complex national stage.

When you add this to the brooding controversy around his health and age, you wonder why the frenzy by many who you would normally expect to be more dispassionate and cerebral about this critical decision. But as someone said recently, most people make political decisions based on sentiments rather than logic. It’s one of the weaknesses of democracy.

One can only hope those with good sense or that are at least driven by interests that will serve the common good will prevail over those touting these members of the old political establishment as our messiahs.

One can only hope that in the end, Nigeria will win.

*Segun Sopitan*
Public affairs Analyst and Good Governance Advocate

It's for the fact that everyone in Nigeria is running to it for better life, Lagos is the city where dreams come true in Nigeria.

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