How will you handle the issue of local governments and their ability to perform their primary duties in Lagos State
It is for the Federal Government to know and appreciate the fact that it has to reduce all the burden of local government administration all the way from Abuja and let’s look for a more impactful solution, and we will continue to have that conversation with them. I was in a meeting recently with the Vice President and the conversation is still on for them to look at it. It is also a National Assembly issue. But we also need to reinforce issues around financial prudence and look at our procurement procedures. It is not just about fixing the roads again, but we need to look at the structure in totality, what do they get? Where do they get it from? With the challenges, most of them cannot do a lot, but there is a need for the Federal Government to be able to push out the revenue for local government development.
What about educational development in the state?
The number has changed and the population has grown, yet, education is the only thing that a government cannot enforce, it is a choice. Where or how you train your child, you can’t enforce it. That is why in America the university education, you have to save for it. But what government needs to do is provide for the vulnerable, you must ensure that they have that opportunity. We have over one thousand and sixty public primary schools, are they enough? No. We have over one thousand three hundred public secondary schools, are they enough? No. But we also need to consider what the total budget is, and be sure and very creative how we disburse all the funds. One thing we can do is, while we have over a thousand public primary schools, we have close to twenty thousand private schools. There is a commercial interest here, and I cannot stop your wife from converting that your one-storey building to a private school, what I can do is to ensure I partner with her and ensure that she meets my needs as a regulator and encourage her to ensure that the bills she is asking people to pay is not too huge, and the need to have safety measures in your school, and ensure that my investor works with you, then look for ways to take care of the quest for the poor.
The traffic problem in Lagos is huge, you can’t plan your time, how will you resolve this?
Everybody wants an expressway but nobody wants it in front of his house. Everybody wants a solution, but as long as it is over them, it is okay. But coming to traffic management is to look at quick jobs and areas we can do what I call quick fixes. I’m not an engineer, but I was in an engineering faculty. When I was with the Babatunde Fashola administration, at a time we had so much traffic coming down from Third Mainland Bridge up to Onikan, and I said to myself, it is possible to get a bypass under the bridge in front of MUSON Centre, but some said it was not possible. One day, we entered a bus including the governor, and we came down in front of MUSON Centre, and as a surveyor, I measured the road portion and marked the line, it was there we realised that you don’t need to go down the Military Guest House before you make a turn and we were able to do it, it became a simple solution that was only between 100 to 200 meters curve that solved a forty to fifty minutes journey. These are some of the innovations we can bring about. That was just a creative invention which has nothing to do with the fact that you have a Masters degree in Civil Engineering, it is just a creative thinking and solution. Another is, if there is a four-lane here where there is traffic, it is blocked, and you have another four-lane opposite that is empty and moving, why can’t we think through a solution that in the morning or whenever the traffic builds up, lets create additional two lanes from this four-lane road that is empty, all we need to do is to look at how we solve issues around enforcement and management of it, that is, where is the entry point and where is the exit point of the road. So, the solution is, when the road is blocked, extend this one to be six lanes and the other free one to two lanes to ease the traffic. You can solve all these problems without even building some of those things that can take you one or two years to build, and it is the model we will use, not that it will solve all of the traffic problems, but it is going to take a lot of patience and enforcement. These are some of our quick ways, high on impact in our views and we are going to push it in the first six months. We are also going to look at how we have a good mass transit system. We will reinforce a railway system which I and my running mate, Femi, conceived over ten years ago when we were in government. I will also complete the road project the present government has embarked upon. Ambode is my governor and I have the greatest respect for him and the office he occupies. Also, we look at things we have to do very quickly on the waterways.
Then, how do you boost the housing scheme, looking at Ilubirin as an example?
It is taking a lot of time for us to take it up, but it is not going to be an abandoned project. Part of the problems I think they are having is how to connect the roads, coming from the Island, how do you connect the road with the Mainland? We have to look at this very critically. Also, one of the things we have seen is that we are wrong with all of the designs we have been drawing. Some of us have had an opportunity to travel abroad, you go to the UK they tell you this is three bedroom flat, once you climb up, you see one room, two rooms, three rooms, and there is no wastage. But if I go to your three bedroom house now, you have a long corridor, you have a long passage, you have a long veranda, and you want it big. You want to come out of your room to the balcony; this is part of the creative financing we are talking about. We’ve realised that if we do smart buildings we can actually achieve our thirty per cent more numbers than we have now, it is space management and space allocation. Why do we need to do a four bedroom for you when you have only one child? What you need is only one bedroom. These are the conversations and that is why it has not taken up. You don’t do big man in a big city, people sit on top of each other in New York City. Those are the tough conversations we need to have so that people will know that you don’t need to have a big fence, all our developers need to know that this is what they have to do. Everybody wants speed, everybody wants efficiency. We need to have a twenty-four-hour economy, let’s light up the space such that as some people are closing at 6 o’clock, others are taking over at 7:30 pm. Let’s grow the Lagos economy, and those are the creative solutions we are talking about to unlock potential for development.
Waste management is another problem, how can this be tackled?
People have been asking what will I do with the Visionscape? The issue is you don’t throw the baby with the bath water. If there is a problem, let’s sit down and address the problem. The fact that it is not working now does not mean there is nothing that can work in it. For waste management, you and I know that the problems start from your kitchen and my kitchen. It is the problem of sorting and people complying, and a problem we have to handle with advocacy. Please, after finishing your food and you drank your water, and we say that red bag is for rubber or plastics, yellow bag is for bottles, and black bag is for domestic waste and you comply, what you are doing is, you are unlocking a potential for somebody who is interested in waste management, because the moment he comes to pick it and he finds out that it has been well sorted out, there is one for bottles, for plastic and organic waste, he becomes more interested. It is a no-brainer, it is a simple logic. Why can’t we get this thing right? It is you and I. If we can sit down in churches and mosques and tell our people that see, this is what we need to do, it will work. When we mix everything together, we are creating problems for ourselves. And what I think we can do with the waste managers is, let’s incentivise people instead of sanctioning them that they are not complying. Let us come up with an incentive that will ensure they comply, so it can become a way of life for others to follow.
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