The Nation Newspaper

Tag: GOVERNOR FASHOLA

  • 34 winners emerge in LagosHOMS draw

    The Lagos Home Ownership Mortgage Scheme (Lagos HOMS) monthly draw organised by the Lagos State Mortgage Board, at its eighth edition, has produced 34 winners out of the 93 applicants that were Pre-qualified.

    This was revealed by the Executive Secretary of the Board,  Akinola Kojo Sagoe, at the draw, saying a total number of 93 applications were received for the month of October, but that 34 winners eventually emerged.

    At the occasion, Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola, who was represented by the Deputy Governor, Mrs Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire, reinterated that the Fashola Administration will not relent on its promise to continue to produce at least 200 Homes every month.

    She appealed to tax-paying residents of the state to key-into the scheme, adding that it is a Lagos State intervention strategy to stem the housing deficit in the country.

    She stressed that as part of the policy thrust of the administration to address the problems of education, transportation, health, food production, road construction, so is the housing sector, which has become a major focus of the administration through the Lagos HOMS.

    Mrs. Adefulire congratulated the new home owners for having the vision to key into the Lagos HOMS. She urged them to continuously spread the news to their families and friends for them to equally benefit from the laudable initiative of Governor Fashola.

    She remarked that the scheme does not encourage discrimination in terms of religion or race, pointing out that people from different parts of the country and different religious backgrounds have won in the past draws and are now proud home owners by just being Lagos residents with evidence of tax payment and the Lagos State Resident Registration Agency Identification Card.

    Amongst the schemes drawn for the eighth edition were houses in Alhaja Adetoun Mustapha and Hon. Olaitan Mustapha Schemes in Ojokoro; Hon Rotimi Shotomiwa Estate in Igbogbo Ikorodu; Igando Gardens in Alimosho; Ilupeju Scheme; Mushin Scheme and Shogunro Scheme 1 and 2 in Ogba.

    He added that in no distant time up-coming schemes such as Sangotedo in Ibeju-Lekki; Omole in Ikeja; Oko-Oba in Agege; Ajara in Badagry; Magodo II and Iponri Schemes will be put up for draws.

  • ‘I’ll reposition Lagos to realise its potential’

    Why do you want to serve as the governor?

    I am trying to free Lagos to release its potential and to reposition Lagos for its very great potentials in Nigeria and the West African sub-region. This is the reason why I’ve come forward to bring out the best of Lagos and Lagosians.

    If you are given the opportunity, what would you do differently from what Governor Fashola has been doing?

    The credentials that I have is that I am an energy expert and I know that Lagos State requires electricity for transformation; it requires patriotic service to the people. Lagos State requires clarity of vision and purpose. These are the things I would be bringing on the table.

    Why are you running under the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)?

    Even the best has to give way for others to push the frontiers forward. The APC has overstayed its welcome in Lagos. They’ve been here in the last 16 years and as you know, absolute power corrupts absolutely.  By their total dominance of the space for the 16 years, they have become anti-people in the kind of policies they’ve been implementing. That is why I feel very strongly that the PDP holds the potentials to dislodge the APC and reposition Lagos for the next phase of development.

    What are some of the anti-people policies you are talking about?

    Everybody that lives in Lagos is under one oppressive law or the other. One, multiple taxation; two, multiple levies; three, they’ve turned all agencies of government into revenue generators. It’s not bad, if they are just mere revenue generators, but they go to the extreme of taking this revenue from the people and that has left a sour taste in the mouth of the people. It is that yearning for freedom that I am bringing to the table.

    Lagos is not an oil-producing state yet and it derives much of its revenue from taxation. If you become governor and you do away with taxation, how would you get the money to run the state?

    Our plans are to enlarge the economy. If we enlarge the economy, there would be enough income tax to run the state; that’s where they failed. Their approach actually stifles the economy and when the economy is stifled, you will require force to bring in income. We are looking at enlarging the economy to empower more people to participate in the economy. Lagos is a megacity and has the mass of the people in place already. But what needs to be done is to increase the earning power of the people, to bring in the youths, which is a vibrant engine room of any economy. We also intend to reposition existing businesses in Lagos for expansion, to enable them participate in the general welfare of the state.

    What makes you think that the electorate would vote for the PDP this time?

    The PDP has not governed Lagos because, as you know, there is a time for everything under heaven.That is why we believe we would accomplish that goal this time around in 2015.

    What previous experience do you have that qualifies you to govern Lagos?

    I’ve been in politics for the last 23 years. I’ve always stood for the people in my entire political sojourn. I’ve been in business for the last 30 years and during that time, I’ve seen the tremendous potential of Lagos. I have proposed several solutions to Lagos State Government, but they were rejected. We must stamp out corruption. We must build a state that would cater for everybody, from the young to the old.

    There is this perception that the PDP at the centre has neglected Lagos.  What is your own take on it?

    What I know is that we would bring the Transformation Agenda of the President to every Lagosian.

    Do you think it’s a good policy?

    The Transformation Agenda…

    No, trying to discriminate against states that are not governed by the PDP?

    I don’t think there’s been a disconnect between the Presidency and the Lagos State; if there is, I don’t think it is deliberate because I believe the interest of the Presidency is the success of every state in the country. I don’t see any move to negate the state because it is not a PDP state.

    Is the PDP going to consider zoning and religion in picking a candidate for the Lagos governorship election in 2015?

    Well, I don’t know about zoning or religion. I think they are just going to consider the best candidate for the job.

    To what extent do you think stomach infrastructure is going to affect the governorship election in Lagos in 2015?

    It’s sad and very sad that lives of Nigerians meaning well for a better life would be reduced to temporary stomach needs. That is a very sad commentary and a reflection of the state of affairs in Nigeria. I believe that we should have gone beyond stomach infrastructure, by talking about a Nigeria where everybody has a sense of belonging; where patriotic leadership is meted out to the ordinary Nigerian citizens and where the aspirations of the ordinary Nigerians is captured in good governance. I think when we build a democracy where Nigerians can connect with the issues, then we would have built a democracy of our dreams.

    To what extent do you think the PDP is going to use the federal might or the resources available to it from the centre to prosecute the governorship election in Lagos?

    We are working very hard to make it an issue-based contest. We are presenting the issues, we are presenting our score cards and we are saying mark us based on what we say and what we do for the improvement of the lot of the people.

  • Fashola at Lagos CAN’s interdenominational service 2013

    Fashola at Lagos CAN’s interdenominational service 2013

  • Of our ‘dumbing-down’ culture (1)

    Of our ‘dumbing-down’ culture (1)

    Citizens need to get angry to insist that governments do the right thing

    Any of us in this country, particularly in the Lagos area are surprised at the reaction of employers and employees of Okada Mass Transit System to the Lagos State traffic law. Why should anyone be surprised that okada businessmen and some of the respectable citizens that have to rely on this mode of transport are up in arms against a law that is designed to bring sanity to vehicular movement in a city that can pass as the most clogged urban space in the universe?

    Why should anyone be amazed at the amount of noise by politics-for-the sake-of-power-and-privilege-only advocates calling for fire and brimstones on the governor of Lagos State duly elected by citizens to facilitate development in the state? The ubiquity of low taste and absence of long-term planning on the part of most of the middleclass men that have managed the country should be enough to disabuse the minds of okadaphiles of the belief that okada transport system is necessary or inevitable.

    The story of okada and of many other aspects of our country’s banalisation of important aspects of modern life is similar to that of a physically-challenged person being criticised by a casual critic. The casual critic said to the physically-challenged that the load on his head was not properly placed. The man in return admonished the critic to look down (instead of up at the load on his head) for the root of the problem. The root of the noise against the good people of the Lagos State House of Assembly and Governor Fashola who made and signed the recent traffic law is an outcome of decades of Nigeria’s trivialization of values that drive and sustain modernity elsewhere.

    Okada did not just spring up at a time when there was no government. It is one of the regrettable legacies of military dictatorship. Like the current constitution that emptied the country of its federal values, okada came into being under the nose of military dictators. In most countries with forward-looking rulers – military or civilian—okada as a mode of mass transit would have been prevented through right policies and legislations from surfacing in the first instance. The care-free attitude of military rulers when okada transportation emerged and of succeeding governments until Abuja and Port Harcourt blazed the trail of legislating against okada is still at work in other areas of our national life. The recent effort by the government of Lagos State to push the lever of transformation from primitivism to modernity is expected to be resisted not only by okada transporters but also by opportunistic politicians and even honest professionals who are not conversant with the historic duty of the middle class in modern times.

    The role of the middle class since the Renaissance and more especially since the Industrial Revolution is to work to improve the quality of life of the individual and of the society through establishment of standards and practices that are capable of refining the life of the citizenry. Since governance moved from feudal lords to members of the middle class, standards have improved generally at the hands of middle-class men and women in government and society. Such time-honoured middle-class values as commitment to personal security and safety; promoting intersection between individual’s success and the success of society as a whole; and acceptance by government of responsibility to provide transportation and communication infrastructures have been overlooked or ignored by government and cultural leaders in our country for too long, until a few governments recently started to take the risk of restoring some of these values. The scapegoating of Lagos State government for taking bold and brave steps to restore order to the transportation sector in the state is understandable. It is the result of decades of dumbing down of values that are central to sustaining modern life.

    Why would people who grow up not having safe roads to travel within and between towns in most states of the union not feel bad that Lagos State is trying to move the country’s most populous city from chaos to order? Why would citizens with no regular access to train or bus feel uncomfortable about okada mode of transportation? Why would citizens that migrate from villages without any trace of modern means of livelihood and living not feel angry that okada is being demonized in Lagos, the city that they have come to see as an anything-goes city that belongs to nobody?

    Why would citizens who migrate from villages where governments have no interest in how they get to their farms and places of work not feel scandalized that Lagos State feels obliged to regulate a chaotic transport system in the city? Why would citizens who travel on unsafe roads in 14-seater buses named Federal Government Assisted Mass Transit System not feel out of sort in a Lagos that says okada transporters must do their business in a way that is safe for majority of the citizens and residents of Lagos? People who have been degraded over the years cannot but feel cheated that any government in the country, particularly in what they think is a free-for-all state, certainly need help and re-education to grow out of the cultural inferiority they have been thrown into over the years.

    But the way out of the problem created by okada business is not to look for reasons to justify keeping okada as an acceptable mode of transporting citizens across the state. Okada should not have happened in the first place, but it is never too late or too risky to put an end to an unsafe business for citizens at large. Lagos State Government should be congratulated for embarking on a national project that is long overdue for remediation. If legislating against indiscriminate use of okada makes citizens angry, it may not be a bad thing at the end of the day. Citizens need to get sufficiently incensed to pluck the courage to insist that federal and state governments across the country should do the right thing: provide proper infrastructure for proper mass transportation. It is senseless to expect any responsible state government to feel good about an inherited policy to move over 17 million people by okada. Citizens need to be angered to the point that they are ready to tell their governments to do the right thing: provide transportation and communication infrastructure to encourage entrepreneurs to put more buses and taxis on the roads, to convey citizens in a dignified and safe manner.

    That Keke Marwa or Keke NAPEP is used in India or okada is used in Benin Republic is not a sufficient reason to rely on this mode of transportation in Nigeria. Trains, buses, and taxis are used in most countries of the world to transport citizens. Civilisation or modernisation is about copying good practices, not bad ones. Encouraging okada as a mode of transporting the masses in one of the most populous cities in the world is an illustration of a culture and government that have lost the will to protect citizens.

    To be continued next week.