How Sanwo-Olu can measure up to public expectations —Gbadamosi 

The candidate of the African Democratic Party (ADP) in the last governorship election in Lagos State, Mr Babatunde Gbadamosi, speaks on the Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu-led administration in the state. BOLA BADMUS brings the excerpts. 

Elections are over, can it be said that you are the voice of the opposition in Lagos State?

I don’t know what you mean by voice of opposition but elections can’t be a seasonal conversation; it can’t be something that happens only when there are elections around the corner, if truly we are interested in developing. The conversation is ongoing. For instance, the governor of Lagos State, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu, is talking about palliative measures on the roads. I disagree with those palliatives in the way that they are executing them. I think it is a waste of resources; the people of Lagos State are actually not benefiting. I have said this much but the state government is persistent in just throwing granites on the roads and compacting with rollers and then waiting for the rain to come and wash it away and they go through the process again and again.

Governor Sanwo-Olu, has been in office for about seven months. How will you assess him, vis-a-vis his achievements so far?

I have always said from the inception of this administration that service to the people is more important than anything else and I know that the governor has certain interests. So, he needs to find his spines, barking and will and execute the things that he said he promised when we had that famous debate. There were certain things he said and some of them are not quite fulfilled like the Apapa gridlock. He said he would fix that within 100 days. I thought it was a tall order. So, I am willing to give him a leeway on that because I knew that Apapa could not be fixed in 100 days and I didn’t go along with that. That is why I didn’t make that promise because I knew it couldn’t be done in 100 days; it would take at least six months or a year to address the Apapa gridlock issue.

In terms of governance and what he has done so far, I think there are areas where he could have done better, like appointing government officials-commissioners and special advisers. I think that went on for too long, creating a lot of unnecessary drama that detracted him from the job of government. So in some areas, he has not done what we expected him to do and there are some areas where he seems to be struggling, including water, roads, education, electricity and housing, among others.

What about the minimum wage issue?

The minimum wage issue, again, is zero because, like I said during the pre-election debate, Lagos can afford to pay N100, 000 as minimum wage to civil servants, considering the cost of living in the state. It is a real cost. Some of you who came here, it took two hours to get here. This is Saturday; it is not even a working day. Now imagine what people are going through during working days. During the debate, I said the average travel time in Lagos was six hours. I was corrected a few weeks later by a report that it is actually seven hours per day that an average worker in Lagos spends in traffic. Now that figure would have gone up to eight hours as people are spending four hours to get to work and another four hours to get back to their homes; some times, it is even worse than that. So, the governor needs to wake up and sort this out. It is the easiest thing to do in the world. We can achieve a lot and we can achieve it faster and more strategically than we are doing in the area of road construction.

Are you saying Sanwo-Olu’s administration is a failure?

It is too early to say his administration is a failure. In the area of transport development, he is not doing what he should be doing. We are in the era of publicity and celebration and saying that Lagos is doing really well. There are festivals here and there…

But it is a way to boost tourism…

Tourism without roads, you got to be joking. How will the tourists get around?

What about the Lagos/Badagry highway?

The Lagos-Badagry highway is a shame; it is a shame to 20 years of APC governance of Lagos. It is a shame to all of us as the people of Lagos State that we allow the same administration that let the road fall into disrepair, despite getting the go-ahead and the funds from the Federal Government and its partners to redevelop the road. They have failed and they will continue to fail. In fact, now I understand that a briefcase company has been handed the contract to resurface the road and they are not doing anything; they are just going back and forth and trying to look busy.