Akinwunmi Ambode, the new Lagos governor may, Bible-speak, have gained a “settled kingdom”, where much seems to work.
Everybody perhaps would remember Babatunde Fashola, SAN, immediate past governor, who bolted off the starting blocks, zoomed through an eight-year gubernatorial marathon like a sprint, and breasted the tape hardly betraying any fatigue.
But perhaps a little less would remember Bola Tinubu. Back in 1999 and 2007, Asiwaju Tinubu’s power advent and exit were much less dramatic — and much more traumatic.
In 1999, he was transitional governor from the military, that collapsed about everything. True Buba Marwa, Tinubu’s immediate predecessor and retired Army brigadier-general, proved his own mettle. But all was ad hoc, “military standard” that could hardly be built upon. So, Governor Tinubu’s starting point was much slower and less dramatic.
In 2007, Tinubu’s exit was no less sluggish.
On the politics front, he was emerging from the bruising battle with a bully Federal Government, under President Olusegun Obasanjo. Obasanjo illegally seized Lagos council funds, to bring Tinubu’s government to heel, over its creation of additional 37 local governments. But the council funds battle was under a wider war, by the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to crush the opposition, of which Tinubu was chief irritant.
On the policy front, the Lagos metropolis was a vast work-in-progress. Yes, much of the Lagos Business District (LBD) infrastructure renewal had been completed, with the out-going Governor Tinubu commissioning the Tinubu Square fountain and adjoining works, at the very dusk of his governorship. But much of Lagos was still dug up for the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) tracks. From exiting Tinubu to Lagos then, it was a trauma of rebirth.
And with trauma, there is less drama.
But the BRT offered Mr. Fashola his proverbial low hanging fruits, with which he hit the ground running. In virtually no time, he would make his signal presence on the environment, greening the hitherto grey Lagos Marina; and in the night, dressing it in a blaze of lighting, to Lagosians’ lusty cheer but criminals’ dire gripe.
He would later stamp his inimitable persona of governor as rigorous thinker: lighting up major highways at night; birthing a landmark public-private sector security innovation that made Lagos a safe haven, in a desert of violent crimes; spearheading the Ebola rapid response and curtailment that earned global applause; orchestrating the swift reaction to the Dana Air crash, gifting victims immediate relief; imposing the governor as passionate environmental freak, creating numerous gardens and parks all over the metropolis; staging the yearly Lagos Black Heritage Festival — on the surface a Brazilian-like carnival, but really a practical report card of state-trained artisans in varied skills, who design and sew the carnival costumes; and near-magically reclaiming Oshodi from a den of traders, staking their democratic right to corner a major highway as illicit mart.
You bet nobody now remembers the notorious Oshodi gridlock, that virtually closed down the vital Agege-Motor road — pit black at night, where muggers, petty robbers and pickpockets made hay!
Just as even less remember those bad, bad days, back in 1999, when Lagos was a mountain of refuse, a rubble of broken infrastructure, a bastion of crime and epitome of sheer paralysis, which former President Obasanjo once infamously dismissed as a “jungle”!
Why, a populist attempt at security almost backfired! The new Tinubu government changed the Marwa elite crime busting squad from Operation Sweep to Rapid Response Force, only for somebody to realise you could not have another force inside the police force! So, the new name became Rapid Response Squad (RRS).
That prompted many an impatient media analyst to dismiss the Tinubu government — just as not a few, even in the informed media, are already dismissing the new Buhari presidency — as long in sloganeering but painfully short in innovative ideas.
Even, Tinubu’s starting billboard ad, likening him to the Indian Mahatma Gandhi and the great Chief Obafemi Awolowo, playing on the similar shape of the pair of glasses the trio wore, became a butt of jokes.
That jeer would last for no less than two years, during which the Tinubu government dug deep and came up with new sustainable developmental paradigms: the Oracle computerisation to plug leaks in the salary bill, the public-private-participation model in waste management and, of course, the revolutionary tactics to drive up internally generated revenue (IGR), that would lay the foundation for Lagos’ partial financial independence, while most other states succumbed to the financial profligacy of the Goodluck Jonathan presidential years.
Between Tinubu and Fashola then, a biblical parallel. Tinubu was the David that built the kingdom from scratch: and fought all of the wars, politics and policy.
Fashola was the near-Solomon. A relatively settled polis provided a launch pad for his brilliant policies, vaulting Lagos as a national poster boy of sane governance, though Fashola’s Solomon-like policy harshness, in some areas, would make many wish he was imbued with higher emotional intelligence. Still, he brilliantly fulfilled his moniker of the “Actualiser”.
So, where comes Mr. Ambode in all of this? That is a tough one.
Not for him the strategic lethargy of Tinubu’s entry and exit. Not for him the blistering brilliance of Fashola’s gubernatorial sprint. Just a humdrum entry — less to do with his own putative brilliance, but more with the joyful sadness that things appear settled and placid.
Just as well Mr. Ambode has prayed for the wisdom of Solomon during his tenure. Indeed, he would need some Solomon complex to make his own mark in post-1999 Lagos.
Still, a Solomon syndrome is a double-edge sword. Solomon was the wisest man in history, who drove unprecedented prosperity in a secure Israel. But his idolatry and policy harshness also tore up the kingdom of David.
The comfort though — and that comfort is not at all cold! — is that Ambode has been pretty much an insider, in the renascent post-1999 Lagos. As Lagos accountant-general, he was key to the financial re-engineering of the Bola Tinubu years.
Indeed, during the fierce council funds war, he was there, a dutiful civil service technocrat, helping his political masters to create an adequate fiscal response to the dire emergency.
But there is a gulf between stepping out to call the shots and orchestrating things from the hot comfort of the policy room.
So, Mr. Ambode’s power-entry strategy could well be ensuring those Fashola-era policies click even more tick-tock: inviolability of BRT tracks, keep suicidal Okada riders off the highways, a zero tolerance for crimes, a special eye on Oshodi and its traffic-subversive traders, further greening and clean-up of Lagos — generally consolidating the old order.
Then, an aggressive tackle of inner-city roads, an area many a critic insists Fashola did not do so well.
But Ambode’s entry big-bang may well be the delivery of the light rain mass transit, which Tinubu conceived and Fashola had been working on.
On that, President Muhamadu Buhari owes Lagos. His first coming as military head of state scrapped the Jakande-era Lagos Metroline project. Governor Ambode must leverage on party amity and Lagos’ special status to ensure Buhari’s second coming rights that historic wrong.
