THE Lagos State Commissioner for Transportation Ladi Lawanson has thrown his weight behind calls for the state to be accorded special status and for the Federal Government to pay the cost of its infrastructure needs.
He called on the Federal Government and especially the National Assembly to recognise the special role the state is playing in the country and grant it a special status.
A bill granting Lagos a special status and some percentage of revenue dedicated for its development from the Federation Account had suffered a setback on the floor of the National Assembly during its first reading last year.
Lawanson, who spoke on the sidelines of the presentation of a new transportation policy to make the state’s roads more people-friendly, restated the need for such special status and fund on Wednesday.
He said it was a misnomer for the central government to abandon the state to continue to take care of its overstretched infrastructures all by itself despite being the nation’s commercial and economic life wire.
According to him, notwithstanding any differences anyone may have against the issue, according the state a special status is in line with best global practices and would accelerate the state’s capacity to respond to the infrastructural demands.
He said: “Not only is the state home to two of the busiest ports in Nigeria, where about 90 percent of all imports and exports enters into and leave the shores of the country, it is also home to the Atlas Cove, the main artery from where all domestic fuel needs of the country – whether AGO or PMS – are sourced.”
“What happens if Lagos decides to shut the ports, or lock the Atlas Cove? It would mean total economic paralysis of the country, because every part of Nigeria depends on Lagos. That is how central this state is to all of us and that is why the Federal Government ought not to play politics with the issue of assisting the state to cope with its huge infrastructural needs and abandon the state to continue to struggle with financing such needs,” the commissioner added.
Lawanson pointed out that developments across the world showed that city-states that shared the same feature like Lagos were never abandoned by their central government.
The commissioner named the City of London and the fact that the United Kingdom has a special fund that accommodates London’s development strides.
Lawanson advocated a special status for Lagos, and the setting aside of special allocation to the state to help mitigate the effects of the economic activities that the state has to share for the entire country.
The commissioner said not only are the ports being overstretched, the roads too have become inadequate to cater for the volume of vehicles that find their way into the state every day.
This, he said, is further compounded by the number of people who find their ways into the state every day, many of whom never returned to their respective states.
He said with a population growing by at least six percent and with about 200 new migrants into the state every day, the state would need special funds to be able to rise to the occasion and be able to provide the basic infrastructure that would accommodate them.
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