THE party to which you belong has picked you as its governorship candidate. So, how was the exercise and how did you see the victory?
The primary in Social Democratic Party was peaceful and very organised because the party has consciously groomed its members to be orderly, to understand that it is important to focus on the opposition and that is important to promote the values of SDP for which reason when we were having our primaries. We made sure it was without rancour and we wanted to make it different from what we saw in the PDP and APC in particular. So, it was peaceful and very organised and it was actually a consensus candidate.
Having emerged as the party’s candidate, how do you want to go because the focus now is that, come 2019, SDP will produce the next governor of Lagos State. How do you want to make the dream come true?
SDP has very laudable policies and ideology and I believe that if the people of Lagos have the opportunity to listen to what the party stands for, the party will win the next election. SDP is a party that is predicated on social welfare, free education, free healthcare, affordable housing, mass transportation, everything to improve the quality of life of the people and done in a simple manner through commitment and transparency. I think once the people of Lagos know that, they believe that is what we stand for. I think they will vote for me and I will be the next governor of the state.
Now in particular, what do you think the people of Lagos lack mostly looking at everywhere now?
Whenever it rains in Lagos, everywhere is flooded. The streets are unmotorable; there is traffic jam everywhere; water runs into people’s houses; the gutters are flooded and there is filth everywhere. Houses are even destroyed. You know houses collapsed all the time, so that’s one major concern.
That is to say we will build drainages in the whole of the state so that water can now free-flow into the canals and into the Lagoon and that would improve movement and it would create more comfort and of course, save lives, clean environment and actually increase trade because if you are able to move, time is money and time is wasted all the time in Lagos and health of people is damaged by all these things. So that’s one major area of our concern.
So, we must improve the transportation system and one way to improve the transportation system is not by building fanciful bus-stops as Governor Akinwunmi Ambode has done by improving and developing the water transportation in Lagos. Lagos is an island surrounded by water, transportation by water, ferry and jetty and all of those services would be improved. Government will spend a lot of time and money, creating partnership with the private sector to improve and upgrade our water transportation to the 21 Century level, as good as anywhere in the world. These are some of the things that are critical for Lagosians.
Moshood Salvador, former chairman of PDP in the state, while crossing over to APC, the ruling party, declared that Lagos is a one-party state with his movement into the fold. Do you agree with him? With that, why the need for SDP, PDP and all others?
Lagos has always been ruled by APC since the return to democratic rule in 1999. So, in that case, it has always been a one-party state. Am I wrong? This is because the PDP has not been a real challenge and part of the reasons is that many people like Salvador, when they were in PDP, were actually serving the interest of APC. Some of them were suspected to be double agents, playing PDP in the afternoon and APC at night. So, he has exposed himself by making that declaration.
Since he couldn’t win any election for PDP in Lagos when he was in PDP, why does he think he will make any difference where he goes? You know what has happened to him? He should keep quiet. APC should be ashamed of itself. Lagos has always been a one-party state because there is no real opposition party and that is the reason SDP has come up and for the first time a progressive intellectual like me will only get the ticket in Social Democratic Party.
For the first time in 20 years, we have real opposition to the APC in Lagos and that is the SDP now represented by myself and certainly, Moshood Salvador would realise as we emerged that yes, a real opposition has come and the people must have a choice.
Initially you had thought that before you signified your intention to run that Governor Ambode would be the one you would face in 2019. Now you have Mr Sanwo-Olu as one to contest against in the ruling party. So, what are your chances against Sanwo-Olu?
Frankly speaking, the chances are much better. If we are running against an incumbent, it is difficult to defeat an incumbent. He has the money; he has people he has actually helped that can help him with his campaigns. He has the goodwill with INEC and so on. Even though he has done well, it may be difficult to beat him.
But here you have a new man who is not known outside of his party who is basically a very defective product because Ambode has said so many things about him that if any of those is true, he doesn’t even qualify to be governor of Lagos State. But nonetheless, the point is that Sanwo-Olu is handpicked, everybody knows it. He has come to serve Bola Tinubu and not to serve Lagos. It is very easy to defeat him. Don’t forget also in addition to all of this, there is a lot of bad blood and acrimony within the APC itself. Many of Ambode’s supporters will not support Tinubu’s choice. Many Lagosians who believe in continuity will say the man has spent four years, let us see what he will do for another four years will not support Sanwo-Olu.
So within their ranks, they’ve always said he didn’t perform. He did very badly, that’s why they were removing him. Therefore, they have accepted that they have failed. So, what we have to do is to remind the people what they themselves have said about themselves and then remind the people what has happened in the last four years that sanitation has been terrible. It has created a lot of diseases, bad health, a lot of garbage on the streets and frankly, it has been a lot of disgrace to Lagos State.
Look at the physical planning, there is no control. They have been building churches, mosques, schools everywhere where there should be free access, where there should be parks, damaging the atmospheres. So, this government has failed in so many ways.
On employment, they are not creating jobs. They are only sacking people, a very vindictive government, owing contractors that are doing things to improve the quality of life in the state because they happened to be Babatunde Fashola’s people and friends. Whether it is Sanwo-Olu or the outgoing Governor Ambode, APC has failed this state and Sanwo-Olu will even be worse than Ambode. So, we are sure to defeat him. This is going to be easier than people think.
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In the first 100 days if you are elected and sworn in as governor of Lagos State, so what do you expect people to see as your achievements?
You will see action from the first 100 days. As quickly as possible we will start the dredging of Lagos State so that we can build our houses on solid foundation, we can build our roads on solid foundation and we can improve the life span of our roads and our houses and we can have a clean atmosphere which will take care of better health for the people.
You will see us within that brief period setting up a mega waterway transportation system for Lagos, you would see us setting up aa recycling process for Lagos whereby I would say Lagos would become a recycling capital of Africa. Every garbage, every plastic, every paper would be recycled and we would get them into a big industry which will now create thousands of jobs. So these are the things you would see. We would be doing so many things simultaneously because you see my own government, my attitude to government, is division of labour, decentralisation of governmnt.
So, all the LCDAs, local government areas will be producing. They will be active and their money will go to them. If a council chairman does not perform and is wasteful or corrupt, he will be disciplined, but I will not take their responsibilities from them. They must take care of their communities. Commissioners will be respected, have powers to be commissioners and to do their jobs. They will be held responsible and respectable men and women to be commissioners.
In the first 100 days too, the people will see that here is a people’s governor. You will see me in the market place, where people would have access to me. In the United States, you see governors going about, what is wrong with us? This is a poor country, here is a poor state, we generate a lot of money but where is the money? More importantly, we have to spend the money on the people, not just collect the revenue and share it amongst ourselves and have commissioners flying first-class, living in mansions, commissioners having four or five cars. No.
We will put an end to that wastage all within the first 100 days. You will see the character, the nature of the administration. People will know that yes, we have voted for a governor that is really determined to improve the quality of life of the people.
and then