Your column of December 12 with the title “Lagos and the garbage question” made an interesting read. As a fellow Lagos resident, I share your sentiments on the need for anyone aspiring to be the next governor of the “Centre of Excellence” to come up with a robust policy on environment given the threat of climate change as one of the existential issues before humanity in the twenty-first century.
For me, it is a thing of scandal that Mr. Jimi Agbaje, the PDP candidate, does not seem to be conversant with this issue, which is the reason why he could be celebrating a big failure like Visionscape whose sheer incompetence landed Lagos in the big crisis that Lagos has found itself in terms of waste management in recent times.
I believe you were even charitable to Visionscape by saying its problem was with the methodology it went about its contract. The truth of the matter is that its concept ab initio was alien to our environment and there is no way the quixotic idea it was touting could have worked or be sustainable. If the existing PSP template had worked, commonsense should have dictated that whatever innovation being introduced should seek to finetune the strategy that was working, rather than casting the baby away together with the bathwater. As the Americans would say, don’t fix it if it is not broken.
One cannot but feel some nostalgia for the years Babatunde Fashola was governor of the state, particularly in his second term. Driving through major highways then, you saw the beauty of a deliberate policy to green the environment and impose order in waste management. A good example was the dramatic transformation of Oshodi that was hitherto synonymous with filth, crime and disorder.
If Fashola shone like a star, it was only because he sought to build on the foundation or a system started by Bola Ahmed Tinubu, not seeking to reinvent the wheel. Before Tinubu came on board in 1999, those who were around in Lagos would attest that the most populous city on the African continent was indeed an eyesore. Driving around then, you would lose count of the number of decomposing bodies by the roadsides or highways, often victims of hit-and-run motorists. Just as heaps of garbage could be seen everywhere – both in the depressed communities and the highbrow areas. Then, the “omo lanke” (cart pushers) were also a common sight.
However, through pain-staking planning and methodical execution, such unwholesome sights gradually became history as the years rolled by.
But watching Agbaje speak on television the other day and defending Visionscape despite its manifest record of failure in Lagos in recent times, I could not but wonder if Agbaje was speaking tongue-in-cheek or if he was living in a different space, considering the public outcry that had greeted the shoddy job that the company did. For, only an enemy of Lagosians will want to sentence Lagos to such an incompetent hand in waste management. On a lighter note, one is now even tempted to wonder if Agbaje was speaking out of vested interest as a medical practitioner. For patent medicine retailers or pharmacists are among those who stand to benefit since people will be forced to buy medicine for sickness suffered as a result of diseases caused by poor sanitation.
Or, could he have been acting someone’s script or expecting donation from the failed company to finance his campaign with an assurance to them that he would retain their service if elected governor in 2019?
When the PDP governorship candidate speaks on any issue, one would expect to hear someone with profound ideas considering that he has been running for governorship for twelve years now. Twelve years is a long time for you to build yourself up in terms of conception of idea or policy for governance. But we don’t see such depth whenever Mr. Agbaje opens his mouth to talk anything, other than seeking to personalize issues. His favorite theme being Bola Tinubu-bashing.
It is a pity that Agbaje’s handlers don’t seem to understand that, having failed in 2007 and 2015, such is bad strategy. To continue to walk that path is to assume that voters are idiots; certainly not the breed you find in Lagos. They are very sophisticated and objective-minded. They will only vote for you if they think you have superior idea. Elections in Lagos are decided by the force of idea, not on the basis of he or she who dishes out most insults.
In case Agbaje does not know, Lagosians are more concerned about who has better idea on public school, affordable healthcare, security, functional transportation system and such things that directly impact on their daily existence. Certainly not scare-mongering or rumour-mongering.
It is not only in the articulation of coherent policy on environment that Agbaje is obviously deficient; he has revealed a far more pernicious side in form of ethnic baiting by seeking to whip up Igbo sentiments in Lagos on false grounds. I think it is dangerous to allow Agbaje to continue his fanning the embers of ethnic hatred by lying that the party of his main opponent, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, is anti-Igbo. Nothing could be further from the truth. The last time I checked, the longest-serving spokesman for APC in Lagos is an Igbo man in the person of Joe Igbokwe. Just as the longest-serving commissioner in Lagos history, Ben Akabueze, is also an Igbo man, appointed by Asiwaju Tinubu in 1999 and retained by Fashola while his two terms lasted. So integrated have the Igbo become in Lagos that the same Akabueze has been found worthy to be part of the “Lagos team” presently embedded in Abuja and bringing their experience and talents to bear over there.
If nothing at all, I think Lagos APC should be seen and celebrated as providing accommodation for all in Lagos, irrespective of ethnic origin, insofar you have something to contribute.
So, if recourse to such dirty tactics didn’t work for PDP in Lagos in the past, only a fool will think it will work this time. As they say, it is a mark of ignorance, if not stupidity, to keep applying the same strategy and tactics and expect a different outcome.
For instance, the same character-assassination/muck-raking strategy was adopted by PDP in 2015 only for it to fail woefully at the polls eventually, necessitating the emergence of All Progressives Congress at the federal level. Then, to make up for its poverty of ideas, PDP simply resorted to attacking Tinubu, sponsoring television documentaries full of claims they were later unable to substantiate in the court. So, when Agbaje rehashes the same grandma’s fairy tales four years later, one only wonder if he has forgotten that those who peddled similar stories in 2015 found themselves issuing copious retractions and apologizing profusely after being found culpable by the court.
I hope Agbaje will take my observations and suggestions in good faith and change his strategy and tactics by focusing more on issues and coming up with better ideas. That is the only way Lagosians will take him seriously.
Surulere, Lagos.
Don’t rule Visionscape out
I disagree with you on the issue of the continued relevance of Visionscape in waste management in Lagos. I think the situation Visionscape found itself was such that it could not have performed any magic because of those who were in charge of waste management were not ready to yield space for it to succeed.
Rather than rule Visionscape out, I think the company still has a role to play. It should be given the chance to participate as waste manager competing alongside the small-scale waste managers. Moreso because of lots of equipment which it said it has acquired. Highbrow areas like Ikoyi, Victoria Island and Lekki should be designated as its own exclusive zone of operation. That way, its capability will not be overstretched, unlike the situation that led to the refuse crisis which Lagos is now putting behind it.
That is my own humble submission.
Lekki Phase 1,
Lagos.
