[size=14pt]Babatunde Raji Fashola: Before Night Falls [/size]
by Pius Adesanmi
Posted: December 23, 2011 - 18:23

It has been one bad news after one uncomfortable news since Fashola started his second term. I was considerably saddened by the fact that he came to Toronto to buy used trains for his rail project in Lagos. Activist Canadians even spoke of the immorality of dumping wagons that are being phased out by the Toronto Transit Commission on a third world city. I am not sure that there ever was a clear mechanism for reaching out to Lagosians and letting them know that their governor was coming to Canada to buy second-hand wagons that even the sellers feared may be unsafe (http://www.nowtoronto.com/daily/news/story.cfm?content=182186). I was disappointed that Fashola’s cerebral mind did not grasp the ideological implications of our people always being considered only good enough for oyinbo used products. In buying those used trains, Fashola placed economics over human pride and dignity. Then came the LASU school fees fiasco and the bizarre rationalizations offered by the governor. I have been in the University system my entire adult life. Fashola’s rationalizations of the fee hike were pathetic. His handlers should have told him to keep quiet. I was still digesting the school fees fiasco when Fashola added to my list of worries by egregiously mishandling the Lekki Toll peaceful protest march. I never knew that I would see the day when a legitimate peaceful protest would be violently dispersed by Fashola – a lawyer! What went wrong? What happened? Before night falls on what had the potential to be a brilliant political legacy, can anything be done? Can he be rescued from his debilitating financial peonage to his political Godfather, the underground source of his problems? What is left of the cerebral Fashola that I described so enthusiastically in this 2008 essay? Enjoy:

Babatunde Fashola: The Loner of Sodom
(first published October 27, 2008)

One of the earliest instances of the ubiquitous act of haggling in West African markets is recorded in Christian mythology. The iniquities of the city of Sodom having reached the ears of the Christian God, he decided to terminate the bacchanals by destroying the city. Fortunately, he had the good mind to seek the counsel of Abraham, his faithful servant. Abraham reminded God of the unfairness of destroying fifty righteous people along with the iniquitous majority. God answered: “if I find fifty righteous people, I will not destroy the city”. Sensing opportunity, Abraham began haggling. What about forty-five? Forty nko? E no gree thirty? Baba God, how about twenty now? By now a Nigerian trader would have lost patience and exclaimed: “you dey craze? You wan spoil my market dis early morning? Go price your mama market like dat! Oloshi!” Not God. He was in the mood to indulge Abraham. Ten? Five? We know the rest of the story. Apart from Lot who was already on his way to safety, God found none. No not one. This story comes to mind as I try to account, tentatively and extremely cautiously, for the mind of Babatunde Fashola, the current Governor of Lagos state, against the backdrop of the kalahari of the mind we call leadership and public service in Nigeria.

Let me enter some notes before I proceed. I am one of those intellectuals who harbor total contempt for the quality of the minds in power – and in government – in Nigeria. Lest I be accused of trying to carve an Archimedean space of non-implication in the morass I critique, I am the first to admit that my constituency, broadly defined as the knowledge industry, bears enormous responsibility for either vacating the space of governance and leadership for minds only slightly equal to orangutans – the orangutans I encounter in my subscription to National Geographic are better organizers and envisioners of orangutan society than Nigerian leadership is of Nigerian society - or participating in governance in a much more disastrous fashion than the obtuse rulers who invited them to “come and eat” in the first place.

http://saharareporters.com/column/babatunde-raji-fashola-night-falls-pius-adesanmi

According to them buying used trains is sound economics.stingy and greedy fellow.Oga fashola, since you are hellbent on pursuing world class taxation methods,you should have no problems delivering world class infrastructural projects,

smh

phantom:

According to them buying used trains is sound economics.stingy and greedy fellow.Oga fashola, since you are hellbent on pursuing world class taxation methods,you should have no problems delivering world class infrastructural projects,

Is he collecting world class taxes from world class earners?.