Remember “Ambode, history beckons”? (10 November 2015) That was Ripples’ challenge, during those not-too-halcyon days of Governor Akinwunmi Ambode’s rather stormy beginning.
As if on cue from some hell, tanker drivers and allied articulated trucks descended on Lagos with a vengeance; while a rebellious LASTMA snapped, napping and snoring to press its ire.
Traffic robbery went on a tail-spin. Neighbourhood thieves declared burglaries their new growth area. Outlaw Okada riders danced vigorous Shoki on major highways, thumbing their noses at the law that barred them. Swashbuckling marine robbers cum kidnappers swooped on their victims, and zoomed off in speed boats, with their loot, in provocative triumph.
Lagos, hitherto assumed solid and settled, was going under — and the new helmsman was the culprit-in-chief! The governor that exited was a strongman. The governor that took over was a sissy. When The Economist weighed in, all hell broke loose!
The London weekly dismissed the new governor as clueless and near-useless in a savage putdown, to which the government’s publicists felt obliged to issue a sharp riposte.
Grand distraction! You don’t bandy words with a medium so set in its ways, a supercilious newspaper (in)famous for its condescension (though not unfounded, in many cases) towards Africa and its umpteenth sad tale of bad leaders.
Better to focus on your job; and sadistically watch The Economist gobble its own vomit, if the vice-hold of its neo-liberal ideology would allow. That was November 2015.
But now?
The narrative, from all objective indices, has changed. The governor appears growing into, and settling well, in his job, one of the toughest in the country. And his entry winning strategy would appear two-pronged: infrastructure (basically fixing inner-city roads) and security, with the well-reported Light Up Lagos project as an adjunct of the government’s security policy.
A third prong, on the policy front, is job creation, courtesy of the N25 billion Lagos State Employment Trust Fund Law. Under the Fund, to run over four years, N6.6 billion has been allocated under the 2016 budget. However, its impact, on job creation in Lagos, cannot be gauged until much later.
On the other hand, there is ample evidence of state-wide general rehabilitation of roads. Visit the far reaches of Lagos, particularly the non-elite areas of Alimosho and allied company, which Governor Babatunde Fashola was said to have touched least, compared with the upscale areas like Lekki, Victoria Island and Ikoyi, and Ambode’s work loudly speaks.
Denizens of Okota, Isolo, Egbe, Ikotun, Egbeda, Abule Egba, Agege and so on clearly see a determined government focused on fixing bad inner roads. From Ikotun down to Oke-Afa in Isolo, to Okota Road, then on to the popular Cele junction with the Oshodi-Isolo Expressway, it has been a smooth and jolly ride, with that critical artery nearing completion.
Work is also advanced on the six-lane artery, of interlocked stones, that links Okota Palace Way, with Amuwo Odofin, en route to Mile 2 and Festac Town. This project, however, was started; and a part of it completed, under Fashola.
All of these projects, according to Governor Ambode at his second quarterly town hall meeting at City Hall, Lagos, were parts of the completed 300 major roads, 66 other major ones as work-in-progress, and 80 other inner roads embarked upon in the 57 local governments in the state. This is aside from the 114 roads, two in each local government, to be completed in six months.
But the crowning glory of Ambode’s infrastructural intervention would appear the flyovers to be constructed at both Ajah, in the Lekki area and Abule-Egba, near Agege. Both sites are notorious for terrible traffic snarls.
While the governor’s road record is glaring, he felt confident enough to crow to his guests, at the City Hall town hall meeting, that crime, under his charge, had dropped by 65 per cent — and he sounded very credible.
He sounded believable because his government just invested N4.8 billion from the Lagos State Security Trust Fund (LSSTF) on security hardware: patrol cars, patrol bikes, choppers, communication gadgets and allied technology. Beyond the frills of launch was also the operational innovation of dedicated dumps to fuel the cars.
Integrated into the security programme is the Light Up Lagos project, an aggressive scheme in which the city is progressively lit up, thereby denying criminals of nightly havens. Also allied to all this is the demolition of markets which, the authorities say, double as virtual snake holes for felons.
The market demolition bit though is a double-edged sword: unless the market folks are resettled, loss of income could trigger further crimes.
Still, from the nervous transition from the Fashola to the Ambode era, Lagos presently appears to enjoy a new lease: the governor growing into his job and getting more confident by the day; and the people seeming to believe in their new helmsman, after an initial doubt.
But it’s not celebration time yet. Outlaw Okada riders are still a pest, flitting to and fro on expressways where they are barred, and remaining, as ever, the menace they have become. So, are unruly Danfo drivers, scandalously socialised into bad road habits, because of no effective sanctions. Ripples just hopes the newly inaugurated mobile courts would bring them to order.
Even on roads, it’s not yet uhuru. Fashola, the governor’s predecessor, is now Power, Works and Housing minister. So, these two great sons of Lagos must collaborate to fix federal roads in the state. A constant eyesore is the Berliet-Ilasa-Hassan failed sections of the Mile 2-Oshodi expressway, for Oshodi-bound commuters. And talking about housing, the governor should try and resume the Lagos Homs project, the ambitious mass housing project his predecessor started.
But beyond individual administrations, the beauty of Lagos is its ever deepening developmental institutions.
LASTMA (traffic police) and KAI (environmental police) date back to the Bola Tinubu era. Despite public complaints of overzealousness against both, they are alive and well. LSSTF bears Fashola’s signature. Yet, it is on its wings that Ambode is deepening security in Lagos with clear success.
When in December Ambode delivers the first phase of the Lagos light rail, from Okokomaiko to the Lagos Marina, it would yet be another salute to positive continuation. That project has also spanned three administrations: Tinubu, Fashola and Ambode. So, has the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), which construction started at the dusk of the Tinubu era.
Lagos therefore, coasting towards its golden jubilee by 2017 (created 1967), despite the current economic challenges nationwide, appears confident of itself, despite its rippling developmental tension.
By “Ambode, history beckons” (10 November 2015), Ripples only called on Governor Ambode, then under intense pressure, to choose either the hard-won successes of most of his predecessors; or fold over, embracing the rare failure of one or two.
It is pleasant to report that the governor is finding his own niche; like his illustrious predecessors, that vaulted formidable obstacles to make a roaring success of their tenures. Though its morning yet, the governor appears primed to push his own legacy.
Lagos can only be the better for it.
