What I Will Miss As Lagos Governor -Babatunde Raji Fashola

It is not because he is Babatunde Raji Akanni Fashola that he appears to get all the attention, neither is it because he belongs to the self-styled progressive political association that everyone seems to surge in his direction. It is first because he sits over Lagos State as its governor – the state of aquatic splendour and excellence, the former nation’s capital, Nigeria’s commercial nerve centre, and above all, its foremost cosmopolitan state.
But Fashola, who took on the challenge of running the state, went past riding on the back of his exalted office to carving an impressive niche for himself through effective leadership and creditable performance in office. That gave birth to the Fashola phenomenon that all have come to accept as a reference point.
For him, however, it’s been eight years of mixed feelings and a path strewn with ups and downs. But Fashola would rather that there had been more ups – alluding to positive manifestations – than the downs. But all these have been scripted to come to an end in a matter of days as he prepares to leave office on May 28, while his successor, Akinwunmi Ambode, a former Accountant-General in the state, takes over the leadership the following day, May 29.
In this valedictory interview, Fashola tells an eight-year story in a fascinating and enthralling 95 minutes. The THISDAY Politics Desk shared in this rather emotional moment with a man, who rose from an obscure corner in the Governor’s Office to becoming the face of change and development across Nigeria. 

Excerpts:

What would you miss when you leave office?
Miss? I can’t even think of missing anything. This is a public trust and it has a beginning, it has an end and once it’s finished, it’s finished. My life didn’t change when I took this job, not in any way that I know. Food hasn’t changed, and my clothing hasn’t changed. Perhaps, the only thing that I had to do more was travel, so, I have to travel less. This is not something to miss. This is something to say that you have done your best, get off the stage and the next manager takes over.

Are you leaving a fulfilled man?
Oh yes, to the extent that I was able to deliver on substantially everything I promised and more. I have done my bit and you must contextualise fulfillment within the nature of the undertaking. It is an undertaking that never ends. It is a job that never finishes. The question is: did you add value? The answer is yes. Did you make an effort? Yes.

There is this thing about you leaving behind about N418billion debt and that has elicited some kind of debate lately. One is however wondering, given the huge IGR that Lagos generates, what is responsible for such huge debt profile?

I have answered this question many times and I think that people simply just dwell on debt but in the context of debt, let us look at the assets too. I am leaving behind hundreds of kilometres of roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, court rooms, social services, skill centers, street lights and traffic lights. I am leaving behind people who didn’t have a job seven years ago, who now have jobs. I’m leaving behind a stronger security force, stronger LASTMA, stronger KAI. That is where the money went.

I am leaving behind a rail system; I am leaving behind so many assets for the continuity of life. I am also leaving behind a bigger work force. I am leaving behind a better equipped work force. So, I think we should talk less about debt and talk about development. Lagos State Government will continue to raise more money. All these take me to the IGR that you are talking about. The IGR, standing on its own, is averagely N20bn. Let’s do the math.

Some months, it goes more than that, some months it drops. So let’s use N20bn as an example. The monthly allocation from FAC is averagely N10 billion. Sometimes it goes up to N11bn; sometimes it comes down to N9bn. So let’s use an average of N10bn, even though it dropped last month to N6.5bn, so we didn’t even have enough to pay salaries. So, let’s take an average of N30bn a month, do the math – 21 million people, divide it, you will come to roughly N1,400 per person in Lagos.

So, it’s easy then to say let’s collect that by IGR that you are saying is big. You are seeing the IGR in isolation; you are not seeing the big responsibilities. Our population has also grown by force migration – Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) resettlement. I just sent a team to a place in Apapa, where there are people displaced from the North-east of Nigeria in camps, so we have to go and intervene. You can’t leave them there without help. The sanitary conditions are horrendous.

So, N1,400, if we wanted a government that just does what is available every month, I just tell everybody take your N1,400 go and build your roads; go and build your schools; go and build your hospitals and manage your security.

But we have to be futuristic, we have to think ahead. The IGR you talked about doesn’t come as IGR to us; it comes as somebody paying for land N1m, someone registersing vehicles, somebody paying his ground rent N3m, but it is because we are accountable that we always announce at the end of the month that this is what we got.

If we wait for the 30 days for the money to accrue, it means we won’t do any work. So people must understand that it means we won’t do any work because the money hasn’t accrued. So what do we do? We borrow against it. The banks that collect it know that we will pay because the money comes through them. So we take a loan, but we don’t borrow to pay salaries, we don’t borrow for recurrent expenditure, we borrow for capital investment.

The person who is waiting to deliver a child and there is no hospital space, I can’t go and tell that person that wait, I am waiting to collect money. If I give you contract to build hospital, I can’t tell you take N1m, I’m waiting for N2m tomorrow. It’s not a way to plan construction. You must gather your building materials; you must have moved men to site and so we borrow from the bank. When the money comes, the banks deduct theirs.

Today, we took N275bn bond over about eight years. The first we had to do is to repay the old bond of N15bn because Lagos State drew N15bn out of the N25bn bond. We had to repay that so that we could take full benefit of what we were trying to do, which was going to be issued in series and we did all these things in public.

What did we use that money to finance? We used that money to finance infrastructure. So as the monthly IGR is coming, we are refunding 15 per cent of that IGR and don’t forget that the N20bn you are talking about, 15 per cent goes straight into a consolidated debt servicing account. We can’t touch it. So, take 15 per cent of N20bn out. We have close to about N100bn in that account to pay the debts. So, those who are saying we owe; the system to pay the bond is secured.

We just paid the second bond, which was the first that I took. We paid it I think it was last year. The next bond will be due in 1917 and it’s about N60 or N70bn, but we have N100bn in the account.

In essence, we have over-secured our liabilities as far as the bonds are concerned. As far as the local short term loans from banks are concerned, we are able to pay and if you don’t want a life of debt, it means first that Lagosians must agree that let us reduce our budget to only what we earn. We have a budget of about N489bn, let’s use the IGR example, 30 x 12 is 360, and so, we are already in a hole of about N119bn.

If Lagosians want us to reduce, will Lagosians agree to stop demanding more services? Certainly not! So this is the context and when you look at nations that we aspire to be like – America owes $16tn. They owe the whole world but they have the best space ships, they have the best aircrafts, they have the best army and they can decide what our own military does.

What is the biggest problem that you are leaving behind?
Well, I didn’t govern to leave problem for my successor. And let me say first of all that government loses relevance when there are no more challenges. The only reason why government exists is to solve problems.

I inherited my own challenges, my predecessor inherited his own challenges, but I can say that what we expect to see is that the job gets easier as we move on. All of what we have done here is to improve the quality of what we meet in order to make it easier for the next person.

We have built stronger institutions, we have strengthened ministries, we have increased revenue in order to meet increasing demands, we have strengthened governance and given governance capacity to respond to service. We just set up a citizen relation management platform on the net to be more efficiently able to respond to people using current communication methods – the internet and the telephone, but every problem that we solve creates a new problem. That is life.

About 200 years ago or there about, the average life expectancy in Europe was about 30 years. You got married; you have a child, be expecting to die. But what did government do? Government started expanding the frontiers of healthcare, today life expectancy is about 70 – 80, but you know it has created a new problem. They now have huge pension bill. You saw the debate in the last British elections, the pressure on the NHS is largely by the ageing population but that is the price of the success of the healthcare.

The Finance Minister said recently that the inability of states to pay salaries is essentially their doing. How correct is this?
I won’t want to have a public debate with the Finance Minister because if it was a matter she was willing to debate, let her call a meeting and we would have a public debate but I think the sense for the public to understand is that the country made a budget on the basis of certain assumptions and those assumptions have become unrealistic.

If you are leading a family and members of your household trust you and trust your leadership and say these are the things that are expected to happen – that this road is safe, lets walk on it and that road turns out to be unsafe because the nation didn’t earn enough, so, your assumptions were faulty and what the nation earned is marred in debates and controversies about how accurate the account has been in terms of all proceeds and oil sales.

Is it then morally right to say it is the fault of the children that they can’t go to school when the resources to go to school has almost halved because you led them to believe that this amount will come in?

I think the time has come when people must take responsibilities for their actions and say ‘I got this wrong, I’m sorry,’ because it is possible for the uniformed members of the public to misunderstand that statement and think perhaps that they couldn’t pay salaries because they don’t want to pay but the admission you must first make is that the income has declined.

Now, let us go for moral, and all of us must understand this, the monies that go to each state from the federation account is for the entire state, not for the public service. Let’s understand that. So, it’s for water, for roads, security and all that.

So, it’s not to pay salaries. What number does the workforce constitute and what proportion of that money would it take every month, because after payments of salaries, government can’t fold its arms to security, healthcare and other issues. So, it seems to me where there is more revenues, the state would not be in this position.

That does not suggest that all of the right choices have been made but I think the issue that I want to address is that it provokes us to rethink the viability of the current state structure because when the debates for the creation of more states started, what I said was that, I didn’t think we should have more states. One of the things I said and I think I was the only one that said it, was for people to think out of the box that states that felt they were not viable could merge.

Some people had some words for me on that matter but the way I see life is that if you unbundled something and it doesn’t work, you must have the courage to put it back and we can’t entrap ourselves, we have done them and there is no other answer. The same way we have pulled back a decentralised police force many years ago, we are now afraid to unbundle it again, but it is not working.

I have never been trapped in the decision I made. I have always been able to look at it and say I think I got this wrong, let me change it and this is the way I think public trust and even our private lives should be because you can’t perpetuate an error.

In eight years, would you say you made some wrong decisions and was that why you asked for apology from the people during your 2900 days in office? Also, what are the things you could have done rather differently?

As for things I could have done differently, hindsight is always 20-20 and I said recently at an event, our job is like actors on a public stage but the stage is live – we are making videos, cinemas – we are on a live production on cinemas; unedited production. Unlike great movies that you see where there is edit and re-take, we don’t have a re-take. In that sense, for 2900 days, every minute of the day, I’m called to act, either in a file, meeting or text, so if you do that every day for almost 16-17 hours, I have taken hundreds of thousands of decisions, could I rightly think that I could have gotten all of them right?

But I acted in the circumstance of what I understood the problem to be. I acted in the circumstance of what time of the day it was. I acted in the circumstance of how tired I was and there is always a choice of not making a decision. I will rather make a decision than postpone a decision. I will rather be guilty of making a decision than be found not to have decided anything.

In that sense, I can get everything right and I would not know how many people that were adversely affected in my decision, but I felt that it was important to let people understand this as I said this is a public trust; it is not personal.

President Jonathan conceded defeat early and this has earned him a lot of commendation across the globe. As a person, do you think such action actually elevated him, somewhat?

I wouldn’t join the debate because there is a raging debate. Some say he is now a statesman, others say he is not a hero; he did what he was expected to do and all of that. I would just say that first; you must understand how we have become, because all of us are looking at an election. Do we normally, as a people accept that we have been defeated?

Let me animate it a little for you. Can you remember how many times in football that we have lost and some people will say if we beat somebody by 20 – 0 we will qualify? You have heard it before – even some of our analysts, they say that somebody who has not lost the first two games – the group leader will now lose by 10 nil and continue to raise hope where clearly hope is gone. So, that is us; we don’t accept that it is over.

It can be a positive energy somewhere else to fight to the last. In that contest, we should acknowledge what President Jonathan did as the right thing. If you lose, you must concede that you have lost. Having said that, I wouldn’t join the debate whether he is a hero or statesman; people would have their views but was that the right thing to do? Yes! And I hope that from there, we can pick an example. Was he courageous? I would think so in the circumstance that I’ve created because he would have to go and tell a party that is hoping to rule for 60 years that I have lost and I have accepted it.

There is a saying that while it seems ordinary to praise people for doing what is right or what is good, we must understand that it is not just for doing what is right that they get that acknowledgement, it is because they avoided evil and the kind of evil that we could have seen is unfolding in Burundi now. The question to ask yourself are the many ifs: what if he had said no and that is my final word on the matter.

Are there lessons you would like to be taken to other states and the federation from Lagos, especially now that your party is at the centre?

I think each state in its diversity must seek to choose what they think is useful and I think that the federal government must also decide which model in Lagos is easy to adapt across the states. The fact that something works in Lagos does not necessary mean that it would work in every state.

If you look for example, the literacy level in Lagos State is the highest in the country. So things that require attitudinal exertions may become difficult to apply in the state that has not reached that level and there are things that are working in other states that Lagos is also looking at from time to time.

Most of what we have done, whether in housing, waste management, tax collection and public works management, we have compiled into a short note. We call it good practice sense and he would be presenting that to the public before I leave and the whole idea is that any state that wants to see the methodology we applied.

We identified what problem we solved, what situation are deployed to it, who worked on it, what was the result it achieved and what was the impact that we have seen? Again, it wouldn’t be devoid of mistakes – our mistakes but these were the things that worked for us.

What has been the relationship between the state and the federal government under President Jonathan, knowing full well that this state is the commercial capital of Nigeria, but it has always been ruled by the opposition party?

In terms of relationship, I don’t know what type of relationship that you mean. First of all, President Jonathan is the President of Nigeria. I am a Nigerian, so he is my president. As a governor, we have reasons to work together because Lagos State is one of the states that make up the federal republic that he presides over and if Lagos works well, he has one less problem to worry about. So, officially we had decent working relationship, though there are things we wanted done that we couldn’t get done, whatever the reasons were not communicated to us officially.

Like what?
There are so many things. We wanted the approval for the red line right of way, it wasn’t given. We wanted to be paid N51bn that we have spent on federal government’s roads and we haven’t received it. That, hopefully, the next government should get.

There are other sundry issues. We thought the nation should have a forensic laboratory, given the serious security problems that we are dealing with and I wrote to the president. I wrote to the National Assembly, we spent our money doing the consultancy. We found the land, the consultants who were recommended to us by the FBI were working with the forensic department in Morocco and I think Morocco has started theirs, we started together but we haven’t been able to start.

They advised us at a point to locate it towards Badagry so that the West Africa sub-region could benefit from it because we have had disasters – Dana crash, Synagogue collapsed building and we had to be taking samples out to South Africa and the US for DNA testing, when we could build the capacity here and we are complaining about unemployment and all of that.

So, we sent all that to them that the land is there, the design is there, the work is done – it is going to cost N80bn but you don’t have to spend N80bn at once. In fact, if you spend N40bn, you will have a functional forensic laboratory, but the total end-to-end cost, because the design was the most contemporary at that time and it has the capacity, if it has been built, to reconstruct shredded paper, burnt paper and provide evidence for tracking crime.

It would do blood spill and blood matching sample and so many things but you don’t need to do everything at once. And I said with N10 - N15bn we could have started and we could have had a lab in place but I didn’t get an official response from them but they called us to a meeting and said they are setting up a committee.

We had coastal erosion challenges towards Ibeju-Lekki and the president came, we showed him all the cost, asking for help but we couldn’t get any help. So, we had to collapse our budget that year because it was going to cost about N39bn plus to solve the problem. So, we shut down on road and re-ordered our budget with the help of the parliament in order to deal with the life threatening emergency first.

We have started building the groins that are protecting that area but there were no official reasons why that shouldn’t happen. So, we just moved on and I didn’t want to be understood as recriminating but I know things could have been better.

But are there areas that you got help?
Yes, when we had the flooding in Ajegunle towards Ikorodu, they gave us N700m. I know the money was paid because we have an ecological fund account, because I have heard a lot of things about how our ecological funds are spent. So, I kept the money in a dedicated account and we are using the money to construct a resettlement camp – housing estate for the people that were affected.

So what we are doing is being drawn from the account. It is not fully used because the buildings are not finished. Some are at the roofing stage, fittings stage. And we got support for our free Trade Zone from the Ministry of Trade, but not cash – good word that government is supporting something perhaps gives confidence.

At a point you were touted as a likely presidential running mate of your party. How do you feel losing out?
Losing? I don’t like being touted and you can’t lose if you are touted. You can only lose if you contest and I have told whoever cares to listen, they don’t contest for vice presidency, they don’t contest for deputy governorship; it is the standard bearer who picks his running mate. So, I don’t feel anyhow because I don’t know if I’m being considered or not and I still have a job to do here (Lagos) and make no mistake about it, I have been in government for 12 years.

One of the greatest strengths of your administration is located in security and this was given fillip to recently by the Lekki robbers who were arrested. What does it say about the security architecture of the state?

What we would like to see is a crime-free state, but the reality is that no such thing exists. Every city, every town and every institution deals with one form of crime or the other but what government must do is to out-think, out-manoeuvre and out-spend the criminals because for the criminals, it is a business. So, we see them as our competitors for a safe city and we must defeat the competitors. I think we have done that largely. When you place their own responsibilities against ours, you will see the odds that are stacked against every government.

Every government as far as security is concerned must be right all the time and the criminals must be right only once. Those are the odds. We have no margins for errors. So, in that sense, what government does is to demonstrate, not only that it can prevent crimes but that it can apprehend criminals and bring them to justice.

That is what we have done consistently and the Lekki robbery as unfortunate as it was, because of the loss of lives we suffered that day and the brazen conduct of the criminals, again our security architecture has shown that it can be strong and we have found and apprehended some of the members of the gang and we are still on their trail.

And it is a good reputation to have because I remember one criminal that they have been looking for in over 14 years, it was here that they apprehended him and I remember when they were interrogating him, he said the police in Lagos don’t forget and that is a good reputation.

People that test our will must know that we will not forget and we will come after them and bring them to justice. But importantly, what we must do is to anticipate their capacity and prevent them from being successful in harming our people. But people must know that if you commit a crime, we will find you.

But the neighbourhood gangs are still on the rise
You can’t isolate a very large youthful population with the challenges of unemployment from restive youth gangs and that is why we have spent a lot of time and a lot of resources in developing grassroots sports and we have created a calendar of sporting activities that runs for about nine months every year – one classic event or the other. The chess classics, long tennis classics, the swimming classics, table tennis classics, boxing classics and all of that but the classics are the top end of the competitions.

What we have done also is to go right from secondary school, so they are involved in one game. The Ibile Game is an all secondary school thing. We’ve done all sorts of competitions, grassroots competitions trying to keep them busy. And we are building sports centres across – Agege, Campus Square, Ifako Ijaiye, Epe and all that. That is the purpose of all these.

And from time to time, we would have young people doing the wrong things; we would step in and put it under control. We also deal with the problem of drug abuse and all these things do not start and end at the desk of government. They start largely with the family and we must parent very seriously and restrict the temptation to abdicate our parental responsibilities because the first government really starts from home.

We have football competitions for example and all of these things are connected. Seventeen years old play under-17 world cup, we win, and three, four years down the line, we see all of the people who played, playing at the full world cup and we can’t find our team, and the word out there is that we haven’t used players of the appropriate age. So I’m saying that if you’re in school, we can benchmark your age. So we are able to verify and track you. And so those talents have emerged. Some of those boys in the under-17, under-21 were picked as a result of what we are doing in Lagos.

We also have in table tennis, somebody who was from this state and who I think is now the second best in Africa. We have quite a few of them evolving, and also boxing where they are challenging at continental level now. So it’s the result of six, seven years’ work beginning to emerge. This is something that I am passionate about, sports development, because I went through it and I think I could find my way back to help build Lagos.

You must do the right things and mustn’t expect to win on day one. Results may take 10 to 15 years to come. I mean we are all celebrating Messi and many people don’t know that he started as a 14 year old from the slums of Bueno Ceros and came to Barcelona with health problems and some people put their faith, money, energy and resources into making him what he is today.

The national assembly was on the verge of amending the constitution before it was stalled by the Supreme Court. Do you think this was a good move?

My general first is to say that the constitution is the supreme law of the country, and it is a law that is never immutably cast in stone. Even then, it’s not a law you want to change every day as if you’re changing your underwear, or as if you’re amending the minutes of a village meeting. There must be serious and compelling reasons to amend a constitution.

And to see that our constitution has been amended, I think in the last eight years, we’ve had all sorts of amendments into the constitution. The first question I’m asking myself is that those things we’re amending into the constitution; are they things that probably should have been put in a law, an Act of the National Assembly?

So a nation that amends the constitution almost in every parliament, something is wrong. We’ve probably put too much in there. We’re putting dates for elections; they shouldn’t be in the constitution. We have over-legislated our lives and put everything in the constitution. And that is why we are having all of these.

Constitution amendment is a major event in any country. The whole nation really almost comes to attention, that, what is going to change? And then you are having a public referendum. Now they are amending constitution and we are carrying on with our lives as if nothing is happening. Constitution amendment is a very serious business if you ask me. And every day they just want to amend the constitution. One day it is the National Assembly that wants to do it, the next day it is the president that changes something.

The question I’ve asked, is it the constitution that is the problem or is it us? Let us look in the mirror and see whether we like what we see, because, and I’ve argued publicly that, when there’s a common purpose, when there’s candour, when there’s a shared value, even a bad constitution will work. And no constitution will ever be perfect because it is made by men and women. And when there’s something that looks like a perfect constitution, with the bad values, without candour, without a shared purpose, it won’t work.

If you had written a constitution for the APC merger, without the shared value, all of the people who formed the APC were united by a common purpose to take the PDP out, and that’s why people were willing to compromise even if they were not comfortable, they didn’t get everything they wanted.

The ACN went into that merger with six governors, lost its colour and name. So you didn’t need a constitution to put us together, we even set-up a merger before the constitution came. That’s the sense. So it is a shared purpose. What are we willing to sacrifice in order to get the nation going? Is everybody going to say this is my position and I am not moving from it? No constitution can supplant that.

Are you concerned about the degree of expectations from the Buhari presidency? Also, what’s your take on the current stalemate over the national assembly leadership?

The expectations come with the moment. There’s a lot of hope in the country. That is the much I would like to say except to remind all that the mandate holder himself has continuously made statements seeking to manage the expectations. And you would also have heard from the vice president-elect that these expectations must be managed. I would resist the temptation to be quoted as speaking for them. I think it is inappropriate to do so.

I’ve also in that sense found myself not agreeing with some of the reports I read in the papers, people saying they are setting agenda for them. I think it is wrong because you voted on the basis of an agenda and so what new agenda are you setting, unless you did not understand the nature of the social contract? They made a promise: security, corruption and the economy. That was the three platform upon which they campaigned. So you cannot set an agenda after the vote because I assume that was what you were voting for.

The British people did not set an agenda for David Cameron; they knew what his party was offering. That’s what they voted for. And so we must help to enrich the debate and understanding of the nature of democracy – the things you can fairly hold them to account for. That doesn’t mean they won’t do other things.

I am being very careful, I am not speaking for them, but I don’t expect that they will ignore all other sectors, but that’s what they campaigned and won on, and the only thing I can share with you now is that that’s what the polls were saying, because they did a poll across Nigeria and that was what was highest on the list of what people wanted: security was number one, corruption was number two and the economy came in third.

I was privileged to see those numbers. So, like I said, no government would have meaning without problems. If they can solve these problems, then new programmes would come.

On the national assembly, what stalemate is there? I don’t see any stalemate; there’s still a current assembly in place. So, why are you anticipating what hasn’t happened? Where is the stalemate? They haven’t even inaugurated the assembly that you say is stalemating, because the assembly can’t begin to do anything until the president goes to inaugurate them. It is when they have been inaugurated that they can begin to think about the stalemate of leadership.

There is a general feeling that the zest that typified your first coming was not there in the second term. Why is that so?
Let me say first that in the first term, I was largely unknown. Some people genuinely didn’t even think that I should be governor and some people genuinely thought that it was just going to be a joke. So, perhaps in that sense, they now felt, wait a minute, something serious is happening. And of course, like I said earlier, once you solve a problem you create a new problem.

Now the debate about first and second term is that I can tell you for free today that my second term was harder than my first, and as many governors would tell you, I think those of us who are compared most have found the second term harder than the first.

In the fullness of time, those who are starting their second term in a few months’ time – you’ll begin to hear the realities of their experience, and you can also see even at the national level, the second term of President Obama and you can begin to make your comparison. Just go and look at his ratings in the first term and now look at those in the second term. That’s the reality of life.

As far as places like Alimosho and Ejigbo are concerned, you must understand that societies don’t evolve overnight. The Lekki that you are pointing your fingers to today, in 1999, Lekki had no electricity. Those who lived in Lekki were running away because they were running on two generators a day – one for the day, one for the night. It was the Lagos government then that did the electrification of the whole of Lekki Phase one, and that was what raised the demand for real estate there, and they started doing the roads.

Now, I’ve told you, with one thousand four hundred naira per person, what magic can we do? But, as far as Alimosho is concerned, if I show you the numbers, we have spent more money in Alimosho, on the roads than we have spent in any local government – Alimosho and Ifako-Ijaiye than in any local government.

And the thing is simple: the shortest road we have dealt with in Alimosho is 2 kilometres. Most of the roads in Victoria Island, Ikoyi are 500 meters, and 1.1 kilometres. LASU/Iba road in Alimosho linking Ikotun to Iba is 17 kilometres of dual carriage way and about seven bridges. Do the maths. Igbolere, the bypass linking to Badagry is about 6 kilometres of dual carriage way with streetlights and drainage.

Now, in building Igbolere, we had to sand fill it to get to the current level. You don’t want to know how many cubic of sands went there. Some of the new roads that we built there we are still working on and haven’t left the site. So it won’t happen overnight. Unfortunately, my time is up.

Now, a part of Ejigbo is federal, that’s where the tankers pass every day, and if I don’t get my 51 billion naira, some people are saying, why are you spending money on federal road? Now, let’s go to Isheri/Ijegun bridge, do you know how much went into that bridge? Gradually we are opening up, so it won’t happen overnight. If we build your road and we cannot get to you, that road is useless.

What a road does is to achieve connectivity. We have always made the hard choices over which road carries the heaviest traffic. Don’t forget that every year we are limited by a budget. If I do a road that goes to your estate but doesn’t go to work, school or hospital, many people won’t be able to get to work. If you see the way we are coming with the road construction, we are creating the connectivity.

If the local governments are functional, some of these responsibilities should have been assigned to them. Does it bother you that the local governments in the country are not working?

When I read some of the comments that have been passed about local governments, I would like to read a more informed comment. Has somebody taken a local government as a case study? What is the staff strength? What are the responsibilities that are thrust upon it by the constitution and not those that it assumes by itself? What are the resources it receives before we now get to election? On election day, when they were voting local government chairmen, did you vote? So, if you are now complaining that a local government did not achieve, did you vote, did you participate?

The local government is so relevant to our lives that all of us want to walk away from it. I have suggested that maybe we should change the name. Maybe because we call it local, because people like to associate with senator, House of Representatives, governor. But that is the place defining change happens. But do you want to be a local government chairman? If you want to criticise, come and feel the heat. Before you can judge someone that he hasn’t done a good job, what resources does that person have?

Let’s go back to security, many of us used to say police this, police that, but one of the things that we saw, we cannot condemn these guys if we don’t give them the tools. We have only given them some of the tools. If they get more, I expect that we’ll see better service. Yes, it’s easy to say that a bad workman complains about his tools, but tools help.

We shouldn’t generalise local governments because some even in all of these have made an effort, and just like you are saying that even I, a state governor, haven’t reached you, they cannot reach everybody. All of these things are relative and contextual, even the most brilliant and skilful person, when you come there without resources, can you make water out of stone? It’s hard.

And what type of local government? We voted for autonomous local governments, and that’s why when I hear local government autonomy, what does it mean? The constitution say they must be elected, so where does the autonomy come from? It’s the people. They say governor seized local government money and they make all of those generalisations and I say look, every month I don’t sit in the meetings.

The constitution created a format for remitting their money – the state joint local government account. So, the auditor general must sit there with the commissioner for finance because the money came through us and we must show that the money went to the local governments. And we can show that. I don’t know about other states.

As a successful governor for eight years, a lot of your admirers are worried that you’ve not built a political structure for yourself, and are concerned about life after now for you. Also, is it a template in Lagos that governance is removed from politics?

There are a lot of uniformed commentaries that have almost matured into verdicts. In life, you must understand what skill set you have; you must also understand in what way you can best use the opportunity that comes your way. Even in journalism, some people are very good on-the-spot reporters; some people are masters of editorial, and some very good copywriters. And so, if you get involved and choose to pitch your tent in an area where you just diffuse yourself, it’s for you to decide. What I did here was to be honest with myself, that what was the purpose of governance – to impact life through development? That appeals to me.

Now, how was I going to get the best out of my time? Can I sit here from 8am to 10pm every day and then from 10pm till 5am every day holding meetings for political purposes? Is there a separate 24 hours in one 24 hours meant for politics and one for governance? It’s how well you choose to use the time.

I looked around and said, I have a predecessor who is still in good health and still has energy. He’s more a politician than I am, he has the experience. So we found a model that works for us. So be very clear, for me, I always find the easy way to solve a problem. Some people can choose the hard way, that’s their choice.

But towards the Lagos governorship election, the politician in you manifested. What happen?

I was not in any shell. You see that’s why I was saying to you that all of the commentators were uninformed. I was not in any shell, not to talk of coming out of one. Now listen, what is this so called structure about? Where were the governors who had all the structures today? If I have no structure, I am happy.

Some people who controlled their houses of assembly eventually found out that they couldn’t pass a budget in the house that they controlled. Governors who believed that they controlled their houses have been impeached. So, I think we are getting all of these things wrong, honestly, and I think that we should become more definitive instead of being peripheral and understand how all these things work.
I have said I will not lend myself to all of these beliefs or stereotypes that somebody is a politician and the other person is not because, when people say Yemi Osinbajo is a technocrat, what does that mean? Somebody who’s married to the Awolowo family was eight years as attorney-general in Lagos to a governor that exuded political public presence and you say he is a technocrat. Maybe you should ask yourself whether you are the one who is getting it wrong.

Can you actually be in a government at the management level – it’s like people who studied law ending up in a management level at the bank and say they are not bankers. My friend Aigboje Aig-Imuokhode that perhaps some of you don’t know, studied law from the University of Benin, so go and tell him that he’s not a banker. We should stand back from those stereotypes and reassess the situation. What is politics? It is the management of human lives, people. That’s what we do every day, solving problems. That’s what politics is all about.

Some of your colleagues went for the senate, why didn’t you? Two, why is it that in Nigeria, the deputy governors do not succeed governors, largely?

Many of my colleagues went to the senate, but I didn’t see myself as a legislator. The legislative work also requires certain skill sets, so I didn’t see myself as a senator. Was it the right thing to do? What may be right for you may not be right for me, but it’s not illegal. It’s also important to be honest with yourself. Four and a half years as chief of staff, eight years as governor, there must be a time also when you feel you’ve served the public space.

If I wasn’t given the opportunity to serve, you wouldn’t have known about me. So, there are many people out there that we must yield the space to. Let the talents emerge, we need many more, and there’s a lot of work to do in this country and we always continuously need fresh mind and eyes to approach the work so that newer solutions can emerge.

On the deputies not succeeding their governors, this is stereotyping again. Let us go to the older democracies, how many deputies in American states have succeeded their governors? Which deputy across board has indicated interest and was told you can’t run? In this state, to the best of my knowledge, my deputy did not offer herself for service as my successor.

In those other states where perhaps it happened, has it not occurred to you that what you are probably looking at is that the deputy may have been looking for the endorsement of the governor? Because it will be difficult to really stop a candidate that is popular in the party if primaries are held – who can mobilise. That is how the system works, whether you believe it or not. Because at the end of the day, no party wants to lose power and the candidate they choose to pick is always a function of their assessment of the risks.

-Culled from ThisDay of 21 May 2015