Quite interesting, but instructive – In the thick of the 2017 rains, a well-known blogger had taken to his Facebook page to draw the attention of the Lagos State government to the bad state of the Oba Akran stretch of the Ogba-Ikeja road. The response from Habib Aruna, Governor Akinwunmi Ambode’s spokesman, was quick and immediate: “Something is being done about it” .
True to those words, “something” started happening the next day, as workmen moved in with their equipment for extensive repair works on the road. Today, it may not be as smooth as every user would desire, but you no longer practically have your eyes in your hands to drive through it.
What’s the import of this narrative? First, it means that there people monitoring and not only seized of the right information, but are ready and able to supply them at all times to the public. Second, it also means that there is a government, which is not sleeping on the job, but alert to its responsibility to the people.
But that is not the end of the story. In fact, it is a tip of the iceberg in the light of what is currently going on in Lagos under the present government. To say that the entire state, has suddenly become a huge construction site, is to put it mildly.
No doubt, it is a situation that has brought with it a bitter-sweet experience, however. I’ll explain. First, the bitter side. On Wednesday, December 13, 2017, I had set out with a well-laid out plan meant to consummate the day to the fullest. Why my daughter’s school chose that particular day to vacate for Christmas, beats me. That was actually my undoing for a day I had planned to pay myself back for working so hard during the year, with substantial enjoyment. It was supposed to be the biggest party of the year to end the season. How would I know that I was entering the road on a wrong day? But I did. Destination – Ojo – mission, to pick up the little lass from school.
I began to notice something unusual on the approach to Oshodi, through the Agege Motor Road. I was eventually confronted with the reality of the closure of the intersection leading directly into the Apapa-Oshodi Expressway, due to the massive construction going on. By the time I eventually made the connection, not being too good with my geography along that axis, I had lost more than hour already.
Again, on eventually hitting the road, I realised I had to make a detour at Second Rainbow, towards FESTAC, the only saving grace on that expressway, since tankers and trucks have completely blocked the remaining portion from there through Mile 2 to Apapa. Unfortunately, it was the same day that a fuel tanker exploded into fire on that axis, which forced motorists back on the other side of the road. That was how the drive which usually took less than 20minutes ended up taking three hours. Of course, the major culprit was the huge construction going on Mile 2-Badagry road.
To cut the long story short, I eventually arrived the party at the time the tables were being cleared. The heaps of bones being emptied into the waste bags, apparently for dog owners and the empty bottles, literally told the rest of the story. Not that I didn’t try to make it by all means. Knowing that returning through Oshodi would have been suicidal, I had tried the Iyana-Iba-Igando-Iyana Ipaja axis. But again, Ambode’s huge construction from Amuwo Odofin down to Volkswagen and more along that stretch, took care of that.
Like many on that road that day and many more before and after, I did not harbour any sadness or make any untoward utterance, even amid massive frustration, owing to the energy-sapping and grueling experience, because I knew the implication. What is a day’s loss of enjoyment, compared to the long term benefits of what is in the offing?
In the main, the complete story is that in the last two years or so, whilst many of his contemporaries are either offering one excuse or the other for their horse and buggy pace performance or engaging in needless political undertakings in preference to real governance, Ambode, has continued to move with a jet-like speed, in his determination to create mega city that he promised the people as his dream Lagos.
The result is that each way you look, wherever you go, the bulldozers are eating up the earth to set up the monumental structures that can compare, perhaps only to the First Republic, when men of vision and mission were in charge of Nigeria.
Now, emerging solutions are confronting hitherto intractable problems. Who would have thought that the people on the Lekki-Epe express could have such new lease of life in so short a time or their counterparts on the Iyana-Ipaja-Abule Egba stretch? But before their very eyes, in their own lifetimes, practical solutions are already coming. Gradually, Lagos is taking shape in grand style.
Visit Epe through Lekki. Be there at Tafawa Belewa Square or Tinubu Square or Broad Street and see the transformation. Go to Abule Egba. Visit Berger bus terminal on the Lagos-Ibadan stretch. Visit the network of roads and Link Bridge within the Aboru and Abesan communities in Alimosho council area and confirm for yourself the boldness of Ambode’s ideas.
Yet, there are many that are not yet eye-marked. You perhaps need to be sick to witness the monumental transformation in the health system of the state or be a journalist to notice the monumental work at the Bagauda Kaltho Press Centre at the Government House, Alausa or require one service or the other to experience the new ease of doing business in the Lagos civil service. Of course, for the naysayers, who are wont to point out that Lagos is the richest state in Nigeria, and therefore could afford the projects he is embarking upon, they should also advert their minds to the other uses Ambode and those in his shoes could have put the huge resources.
What stops the Lagos governor from using the money to expand his political frontiers? Why would he not be interested in who becomes the next governor of Akwa-Ibom State or Kaduna or Ebonyi, so that by the time he is through, he would have built a formidable political empire that would catapult him to Nigerian presidency in a jiffy? Have other governors, some with half or less the resources of Lagos, not pursued such a phantom project in the past?
That is the difference. Instead of following that course that has led many to damnation, he chose differently. The fact that very little is heard of him in terms of politics, bespeaks of a single-minded determination for public good rather than pursuit of ephemeral fantasies. That’s the difference.
Interestingly, again, whilst many of Ambode’s counterparts would have mounted the rooftops to celebrate what he has done during this period if they as much as managed to achieve that record in the eight years. Yet, he sees them as “modest achievements,” as he depicted during the 2017 Christmas party message to Lagosians.
Hear him: “I want to use this opportunity to once again, express this administration’s profound gratitude to you all for your support which is the cornerstone of the modest achievements we have recorded in the outgoing year. I want to assure you that our Lagos project is on course and we are gradually and steadily moving towards actualizing the dream of building a State that works for all.”
How could anybody have described the monumental transformation Lagos has gone through in the past two years as a modest achievement? Of course, the answer is yet, in what many Nigerians lack – humility.
That Ambode is not only the poster-boy of the All Progressives Congress (APC), is no longer in doubt. What remains to be seen is whether he and what he is making of Lagos would be the only thing left of the party to campaign with in 2019, given the picture elsewhere in the country.
- Igboanugo, a journalist, writes from Lagos.
