₦airaland Forum

OAM4J:
N128B is less than than $1B.

That is a very comfortable debt for a state like Lagos with Annual GDP in excess of $33B

GDP is $43 billion+, according to The Economist.

hrm

I'm also curious to see what additional investments Lagos'll be able to drum up from this.

[quote author=ekt_bear link=topic=672100.msg8362340#msg8362340 date=1305924309]The luncheon event was attended by 50 key civil society, academic and private sector representatives interested in hearing the Governor's vision for one of Nigeria's most important states -- Lagos -- where the capital city of the same name (Lagos) heralds a population of 18 million.[/quote]I wonder what this list of 50 invitees looks like.

*shrug*

If no money raised for mobilization and other things, then Fashola would likely have lost this recent election.

Or didn't you see the wuruwuru in 2003, 2007, and just now in 2011?

Fire must be met with fire.

As if Fashola's performance alone is enough to win elections. In a country where probably the voter turnout would be 15% without inducement?

Don't make me laugh

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2072598-1,00.html

Very nice piece. Glad to see the city getting so much positive international coverage.

Really looking forward to what the next four years have to offer.

An Ownership Society
For the past 18 months, Fashola has dispatched teams of surveyors across Lagos to determine who owns what. Once they finish, millions of Lagos' citizens will have a stake — legal and enforceable — in their city's future. The transformation will not be immediate, cautions de Soto. "This is what Europe was doing from the 15th to the 19th centuries," he says. "Even at the end of that period, you had these Dickensian cities." But, he says, "once they got that rule of law in place, they became productive."

For Fashola, the law is key. The changes he is overseeing improve infrastructure, create jobs, make money, even build him a soaring political career. But ultimately, the aim is to end the anarchy, he says. A city that does not function "creates desperate conditions for people and reduces their ability to resist temptation." Lapses can be minor, like driving on sidewalks or into oncoming traffic, or major, like violent crime. Fashola sees both as symptoms of Lagos' dysfunction, and he is tackling them by, in one approach, setting up a series of driver-improvement schools as well as, in another tack, employing area boys as cleaners and gardeners to beautify their neighborhoods. It's working. Orderly lanes are becoming the norm on the roads. And crime is down. From 2007 to 2008, armed robberies in Lagos fell 89%. From 2008 to 2009, car theft fell 54%. And murder more than halved, from 221 cases in 2007 to 94 in 2010. This rising sense of citizenship is revealing itself in another surprising way. Astonished then delighted by the transformation their new governor was effecting, Lagosians were happy to pay for it. By 2010 the governor was raising 70% of the state's income locally from taxes. By diminishing the importance of oil money handed out by the federal government and raising the role of local tax, Fashola has reconnected the state to its people. He takes that as a stamp of approval for his efforts to reverse lawlessness in government as well as across the city. "The capacity of a government to attract taxes is a very strong measure of its legitimacy," he says.

And slowly, like a rousing giant, Lagos is emerging from its Dickensian squalor and rediscovering its soul. The city that produced Kuti and Afrobeat and a host of writers like Nobel Prize-winning author Wole Soyinka is witnessing the birth of a hip urban scene. New bars and cafés, boutique hotels and restaurants suddenly abound. Kuti, it turns out, was right. Something as simple as freeing up the roads can free the spirit. "We set out to demonstrate that we can transform ourselves ,  that there is nothing wrong with us as a people," says Fashola. "At the beginning, there was uncertainty about whether or not any of this was even possible. [But what we did] was suggest in very practical terms — in ways that are touchable and can be seen — that things can be changed, no matter how bad they are. We restored hope. We restored belief." Lagos, city of hope. How's that for vision?

The Bottom of the Pyramid
Fashola is not your usual politician. Rather than barging his way across town with sirens blaring and lights flashing like other Nigerian leaders, he chooses to endure Lagos' traffic with his fellow citizens. Also, Fashola reads economic theory for fun. On his bedside table: books by development economists who see potential in poverty, people like the late C.K. Prahalad of the University of Michigan or Hernando de Soto of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD) in Lima. They argue that the poor may lack money as individuals but together, in their tens of millions, they represent a massive untapped resource.

That counterintuitive approach resonates with Fashola. When he looked at Lagos as its new governor, he says, "in everything I saw, I saw opportunity. The infrastructural deficit of Lagos [is also] a chance to relieve its poverty. If there is a bad road, it means we need an engineer and laborers, architects, valuers, land merchants, banks, merchandisers, suppliers of iron rods and cement, and food courts." So Fashola embarked on a comprehensive overhaul of Lagos' infrastructure, building new expressways, widening and resurfacing others, stringing streetlights along all the main highways, integrating road with rail, air and even water. The city was too big to transform overnight, but improvements were soon marked. Traffic slackened, garbage dumps were replaced with green parks, the proportion of Lagosians with access to clean water rose (from 30% to 59%) and flood defenses covering 10.8 million people were strengthened. Eventually Fashola created tens of thousands of jobs in construction and municipal projects — 42,015 jobs in environmental and waste management alone. New state skills centers trained an additional 250,000 people in new trades, then offered them microloans to set up their own businesses. (See more on Lagos.)

Lagos' chronic lack of space presented another paradoxical opportunity. Scarcity of anything increases its value, an economic truth reflected in city-center rents in Lagos that were higher than those in London or Manhattan. Lagos, Fashola realized, was a potential real estate gold mine. That insight led to Eko Atlantic, which, because of the profits to be made, will be entirely privately financed. The same calculation underpins Fashola's new 17,000-hectare Lekki industrial park, being built on marshland northeast of Eko Atlantic.

The most ambitious part of Fashola's plan is still unfolding. In 2004, when he was working as the chief of staff for the previous governor, Fashola set up the annual Lagos Economic Summit. It was there in 2008 that he met a representative from de Soto's ILD. De Soto's work on informal economies — the unregulated and unmapped businesses in which the vast majority of people in the developing world earn a living — makes him a champion of the idea that the poor are an untouched resource. De Soto and the ILD have set up programs in 30 countries designed to correct that, making the informal economy formal so governments can regulate, tax and promote it. "Everything has a potential value you can unlock," he tells Time. "You just have to figure out how to harness the power that's already there." (Read: "Lagos, Nigeria: Blind in Africa's Mega-City."

In May 2009, at Fashola's invitation, de Soto went to work for Lagos. Almost immediately, he discovered the mother of all informal economies. A preliminary study revealed that 93.7% of the city's businesses, with assets worth a collective $50 billion, functioned outside the law. That handily beat annual foreign aid to Nigeria ($11.4 billion) and dwarfed foreign investment ($5.4 billion) and, if it could be channeled, would deliver an unprecedented boost to the city's prosperity. It also indicated there was so much about his city that Fashola didn't know or control, de Soto told the governor, that many of his reforms would likely misfire. "If you have that many people outside, it doesn't matter what you say to them," he says. "They're already following rules other than those set by the government."

How to get Lagosians into the system? Property rights, said de Soto. Because of the chaotic way the city had grown, most land and buildings there were untitled, making them difficult to buy, sell or borrow against. But if Fashola were to set clear property rights, that massive asset could be tapped. What's more, since they would benefit, residents and businessmen would line up to have their property counted. They would volunteer to become part of the system. "Since the Domesday Book, people have been linked to their assets and identified themselves through them," says de Soto. "Property rights are the key to finding out how many citizens you've got and who they are and what they're doing. Once you have that, then you can reform the city."

Monday, May. 30, 2011
Making Over Lagos
By ALEX PERRY
In his epic 1976 anthem "Go Slow," Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti described the traffic in his hometown of Lagos, casting it as a metaphor for Nigeria's spiritual standstill. "Then your head start to ache because car crush they for your head," he sang. "Lorry they for your front, tipper they for your back, motorcycle they for your left, taxi-moto they for your right."

It's a far cry from this vision of the city put forth by the developers of a new seafront business and residential district for Lagos called Eko Atlantic: "It will be a masterpiece of urban planning ,  with its wide boulevards [and] tree-lined avenues with views over the marina and waterway, dynamic waterfront [and] traffic that flows." (See pictures of China's investments in Africa.)

If it seems there is a gulf between the two, there is — literally. Eko Atlantic is an artificial island, just offshore, being created entirely from scratch, built of sand dredged from the ocean floor. It will be 7 km wide, extend about 2 km out to sea and house 250,000 residents, with offices for 150,000 commuters. A scale model at the offices of its developers, South Energyx Nigeria, features gin-clear canals, giant malls, three marinas, trams, the island's own power station and a sail-shaped 55-story skyscraper that will be the new headquarters for a Nigerian bank. David Frame, South Energyx Nigeria's managing director, calls Eko Atlantic "the new face of Africa." Onno Ruhl, country head for the World Bank, goes even further, calling it the future Hong Kong of Africa. But plans for Lagos' renovation don't end offshore. Eko Atlantic is the centerpiece of a city redevelopment strategy whose ambition is simple and astonishing: take one of the world's worst cities and make it one of the best. "This is a real attempt to prove Lagos can be an economic powerhouse and a gateway to Africa," declares Frame. Ruhl says, "It's an amazing thing, not least because it actually looks like it will happen."

It would be hard to pick a tougher city to make over than Lagos. The place is more normally known as a living, breathing definition of anarchy. With 10 million to 18 million inhabitants — no one is quite sure — Lagos is the biggest city on the world's poorest continent and one of its fastest-growing, with the population expected to be as large as 25 million by 2015, which would make it the third largest city in the world. Those figures describe an unmatched concentration of poor people. About 65% of Lagosians — up to 11 million people — live below the poverty line, earning $2 or less a day. This is chaos at its ugliest, deadliest and most colossal: a malarial megalopolis mostly built of driftwood, tin and cardboard, with precious little running water, electricity, employment or law and order, where the ground is filled with garbage, the water with sewage and the air with the noise and smog from a million unmuffled exhausts. (See pictures of the two sides of Lagos.)

How did it get so bad? It is Lagos' peculiar blight that on a continent with space to spare, the city managed to run out of it. When Portuguese explorers arrived in 1472, the settlement of Eko was so scattered around marshes that they eventually renamed it after the Portuguese word for lakes. Then the growth started. First Lagos became a trading hub for slaves, then a British administrative city, then after oil was discovered in the Bight of Benin in the 1950s, a boomtown filled with oil executives and riggers. Finally, as the biggest port in the most populous country in West Africa, it became a megamecca for migrants. Today a new resident arrives every minute, and each finds ever less of Lagos on which to live. Erosion from the pounding Atlantic means the city's coastline has retreated a kilometer since the 1960s.

Such epic overcrowding has spawned a host of other difficulties — not only legendary traffic but also unemployment, poor housing, crime and disease. All that has been exacerbated by Nigeria's notoriously poor government, something that, in turn, has its roots in the country's large oil reserves. Oil, which accounts for about 85% of revenue, detaches a government from its people. Because it does not depend on them for money, it feels little need to serve them. That disconnection helps explain Lagos' decline. When oil prices collapsed in the early 1980s and state revenues tumbled, work on Lagos' infrastructure stopped. But when crude prices recovered, no one thought to resume it.

Within a few years, Lagos was one of the world's first failing megacities, a victim of what U.N.-Habitat, the international organization's agency for human settlement, calls overurbanization — a concentration of too many people in too little underdeveloped space. Lagosians tried to adapt. With hours of daily gridlock, businessmen converted their car backseats into offices, complete with phones, laptops and secretaries, while motorbike taxi drivers shaved down their handlebars to stubs, the better to slip through the narrowest of gaps. Offices and factories squeezed into residential apartments. Almost every tree was cut down and every garden built on.

The celebrated Dutch architect and urban-development theorist Rem Koolhaas, who has published several studies of Lagos, eulogizes this chaotic, organic growth and the dynamic adaptability it instills in Lagosians. But the reality of anarchy is often less romantic. As long ago as the 1970s, when the city began to buckle, the federal government abandoned Lagos for a new purpose-built inland capital, Abuja. Foreign investors and tourists stayed clear. As the city crumbled through the 1980s, "area boys," self-proclaimed vigilante street gangs that ran protection rackets and mugging syndicates, began terrorizing neighborhood turfs. By the time Babatunde Fashola was elected governor in 2007, Lagos was a place, he says, "of very evident despair."

The extraordinary vision, dedication and commitment by extraordinary individuals such as the results-oriented Governor Fashola of Lagos gives us all hope!

Well said. May Nigeria and Africa have more such leaders.

I had the honor of personally co-hosting a luncheon on May 16, 2011 for the newly re-elected governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Fashola (SAN) at the Army-Navy Club in Washington, D.C. in conjunction with the Constituency for Africa -- one of the leading U.S. advocacy organization focused on Africa. As I introduced the governor, I underscored the extraordinary commitment, dedication and vision of this extraordinary leader. The luncheon event was attended by 50 key civil society, academic and private sector representatives interested in hearing the Governor's vision for one of Nigeria's most important states -- Lagos -- where the capital city of the same name (Lagos) heralds a population of 18 million.

Winning re-election with 82 percent of the vote, Fashola told the assembled crowd that his vision for the next four years for his state focused on infrastructure development, particularly in mass transport (rail, bus, ferries), the housing and agricultural sectors, as well as on educational and training programs for youth. I have seen personally the transformation of Lagos from 2007-2010 during the time that I lived in Nigeria as a result of Fashola's leadership and I have no doubt that during the next four years he will continue to move the country's commercial capital forward.

Noting to the crowd "the importance of coming and seeing Nigeria first-hand," he told the U.S. group that they could not understand and invest in Nigeria unless they actually came to the country to appreciate the array of investment opportunities there.

In response to a question on the recent Nigerian elections where 22 million of Nigeria's 74 million registered voters participated in the April 2011 voting, Fashola acknowledged the irregularities in some polling places which he said needed to be addressed. He also stressed his concern about the violence that occured, but he added that the outcome of the election was credible and gave high points to President-elect Jonathan for "working the hardest" during the campaign and trying to reach out to Nigerians all across the country.

In my view, the key now will be the next steps for the country, particularly efforts to address key social sector issues for Nigeria's nearly 64 million youth, and addressing the underlying causes of the violence (need for education, training, better health care, and job opportunities) in the country's north, where according to Human Rights Watch nearly 800 people reportedly lost their lives.

Most Africa watchers recognize the enormous and limitless potential of Nigeria to expand its global and economic leadership, but more needs to be done to address social sector issues. The extraordinary vision, dedication and commitment by extraordinary individuals such as the results-oriented Governor Fashola of Lagos gives us all hope!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amb-robin-renee-sanders/nigerias-lagos-governor-f_1_b_864550.html

bilms:
By: Abdulrazaq Oyebanji Hamzat


why do people always say God bless Nigeria? hasn't he blessed us? we have oil,gold,cocoa,good land,man power,good weather and knowledge to mention few. [/b]what else do we want? or is it because we are always trying to imitate the USA? Don't u think we have enough blessing? what we need is guidance not blessing in my view. what do you think?

[b]God guide Nigeria

QFT

You are being impractical, jmaine. You cannot have Fashola's succeed w/o Tinubus to protect them.

Or do you think good governance is all that is necessary to keep one in office, when Nigerian politics is so money oriented?

Sun of god:
Simple - They either:

- Convert to Islam
- Relocate Southwards
- Or get 'Slaughtered'

Simplistic, but 90%+ accurate.

No big deal. The debt load should even increase, assuming that they can get reasonable interest rates and find worthy projects.

J12:
haha. The south westerners ousted the pdp from their region. Why should they now expect a HOR speaker position from the PDP even when they have clearly expressed their hatred for the PDP?
Also,That Mr gbajiamila dude is being naive and unrealistic.

I would suggest rereading what you quoted

stormm:
My point is, in freeing money from recurrent expenditure, you have more for infrastructural development. It is important to reduce cost of governance.

Right. But this is obvious to everyone. The point is that some of it (e.g., the "consulting" fees mentioned) likely will never be reduced, unless Nigeria dramatically changes in a way such that money is less necessary in politics. It is nice in theory for one to hope that all excesses are cut off. But practically speaking, in Nigeria that is like going to a gunfight with a knife.

It is only in this country that recurrent expenditure is higher than provisons for capital development. In Lagos State, capital expenditure is just marginally higher than the latter.

Can you provide references for either of these statements?

BRF needs to urgently address the leakages in the system and going further,

Agreed, he should try his best. But there is only so much that can be done, realistically.

he should stop pretending that he is the only functional member of the State Executive Council.

Heh. At this point, it isn't him tooting his own horn so much as the world at large. It is what it is.

I never even really understood the calls for the SW to lose the seat.

What is the basis?

Presidential election, SW voted for PDP (And if someone is claiming that the margin/turnout there wasn't as high as in other places, there are serious question marks about the electiosn held in the North, SS and SE anyways.)

For senate/house/governorships, we voted out PDP. But other regions also voted against PDP, to some extent or another.

There is really no logical reason for the SW PDP not to retain this position, assuming zoning is still in force.

If not, then that is fine. But then everything should be up for grabs.

Basically, some measure of logical consistency would be nice.

Well said.

Ondo State will participate in the proposed regional economic integration of the Southwest, Governor Olusegun Mimiko has said.
He said the six states would reap the benefit of economy of scale from the exercise.

The governor dismissed insinuations that his state may not be disposed to the idea because it is not ruled by the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), stressing that such insinuations were myopic.

Mimiko told reporters in Akure, the state capital, that the idea would live beyond the life span of political parties and accelerate the development of the zone.
He said: "What I am saying is let’s talk about the idea and let us key into the ideas about integration. Ideas will outlive parties. Supposing tomorrow there is no ACN or Labour Party government again? The first thing is that we should first of all discuss the central theme and agree on all the modalities, so that if the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) comes back in Ondo State, God forbid, they can key in and continue. Will anybody be averse to integration? Integration within the context of the fact that we have contiguity. We have almost the same history and, approximately, the same value system.

"And we can create a bigger market and benefit from the economy of scale. If, for example, I want to build a power plant, leveraging on gas, Ekiti does not have to pipe gas all the way to Ado-Ekiti from Ore. So, we can build a big power plant there and distribute it".

Mimiko said the regional economic initiative should not be reduced to a party affair, stressing that Southwest should only continue to strive after free and fair elections.
He said: "Sincerely, it is not a party thing. It is an idea we must key into. All we can say is to hope and pray that free and fair and credible elections will be sustained in Nigeria. Once it is sustained, if any party emerges in any state tomorrow, once it derives its mandate from the people, it does not matter whatever name it is called. I don’t want political terrorism of Labour Party or ACN.
"I don’t want to exchange the near feudal mindset of PDP leadership in the Southwest . It is idea that we should be talking about. We must not emphasise parties. We should emphasise ideas and credible elections. If tomorrow in any of the Southwest states, there is the Kukuruku Party of Nigeria, if the people say that is what they want, then, they will have to continue with the idea because integration is ultimately for the benefit of the people.

"I am a lucky Nigerian in a way. I thank God I am still standing tall in my state, despite the fact that I have changed party several times. I moved from AD to PDP, to Labour Party."

http://www.thenationonlineng.net/2011/index.php/news/6850-mimiko-ondo-will-partake-in-southwest-economic-integration.html

Well, let's just start with his allegations of massive election rigging. See this article, for example: http://blogs.cfr.org/campbell/2011/04/19/nigerian-presidential-elections-the-devil-is-in-the-ballot-collating/

He is attacking a strawman; nobody is claiming that the control of the country is in Campbell's hands.

That isn't even what he is talking about.

I dunno why nobody wants to face the points he raises, but instead wants to attack strawmen, talk about a bunch of other irrelevant things.

[quote author=Jenifa_ link=topic=671424.msg8357192#msg8357192 date=1305876361]i'm just hoping the money is properly invested and ends up improving the economy significantly enough to repay our debt.
is that possible?[/quote]Heving debt isn't a bad thing, especially if you are able to get it at low interest rates like Lagos. I understand that this idea of being "debt free" is attractive, but it isn't really optimal, imo.

johnie:
"Both countries came into existence as a result of the activities of Western colonialists who were on expedition to new territories. In its formative years, the US had problem of North-south dichotomy with the country's civil war just like Nigeria. Our presidential system of government is modeled after that of the US Most importantly; the US has many citizens whose parents are descendants of African migrants, one of who is today the President of the country, so we share a lot in common.

Lmao. Lots in common, indeed.

Anyway, Campbell is generally pretty spot on. They can call him a fear monger or whatever. But the truth is the truth.

I don't see how the "cost of hiring consultants" will be realistically reduced. There are just certain political realities we have to deal with.

If the FG was weak and were less able to use various slush funds for electioneering, then it'd be a bit easier.

But as things stand in Nigeria, political survival is about money.

By Chuks Udo Okonta and Toba Agboola 8 hours 5 minutes ago

The value of trade between Nigeria and Ghana has peaked at $620 million (N97.1billion), the Deputy Minister, Ghana Ministry of Trade and Industry, Mr Joseph Anna said.
Anna, who disclosed this at the stakeholders’ forum on ‘Breaking Trade Barriers in the West African Sub Region,’ in Lagos, said in spite of different barriers across the nations’ border, trade between them has continued to improve.
He said both countries have over the years enjoyed cordial trade relationships, adding that Ghana is intensifying efforts to improve on its export to Nigeria.
He noted that intra-African trade accounts for only nine per cent of Africa’s international trade, which is far lower than any other region across the globe, adding that trade in Africa is affected by barriers like corruption, high tariff, poor infrastructure, amongst several other factors.
"It is well known that transportation costs are extremely high between African countries. For example, road freight tariffs in Sub-Saharan African are in the range of $40.04-$0.14 per ton and per kilometre, compared to $0.01-$0.04 per ton and per kilometre in other developing regions. Trade to landlocked countries in particular is especially costly, with import costs three to five times the global average. It takes 116 days to move a container from Bangui, Central African Republic to the nearest port.
"Time consuming and costly border measures and unharmonised, cumbersome regulatory systems are even greater barriers to trade than poor physical infrastructure," he said.
A recent survey of firms in eight African countries he said, revealed that 85 per cent, experienced increased costs due to border controls, over 50 per cent lost business due to such controls, and almost 25 per cent experience lost or damaged cargo.
The Ghanaian trade minister, said economic studies have estimated that improving Africa’s inter-state road network could expand trade by $250 billion over 15 years, at the cost of only $32 billion, including maintenance.
He called on governments across the sub-region to begin the implementation of existing agreements, while thinking carefully on how to promote trade by integrating the existing strategies into their development plans.
President, Dangote Group, Mr Aliko Dangote, said although the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) trade liberalisation treaty is aimed at developing and promoting trade within the sub-region, it has only achieved much in the area of immigration, regional peace-keeping, security and conflict management.

http://www.thenationonlineng.net/2011/index.php/business/6781-nigeria-ghana-trade-hits-620m.html

@Big B1:

https://www.the370z.com/members/kenny-albums-kenny-s-album-picture27602-calm-down-bro.jpg