Lagos has attracted more foreign investment in 16 months —Ambode

Lagos State governor, Mr Akinwunmi Ambode, has said the reforms initiated by his administration in critical sectors are already yielding positive results, disclosing that the state has so far received more Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the last 16 months compared with what was achieved in the last 10 years.

The governor said this on Thursday, while speaking at the maiden edition of Lagos Global on TV, a programme designed to inform Nigerians on the giant strides of the state government, at driving investment and facilitating ease of doing business in Lagos.

He said his administration had remained committed to creating an enabling environment for investment to thrive, contending that the resolve informed the various reforms introduced.

Governor Ambode, who reiterated the vision of his administration to make Lagos safer, cleaner and more prosperous for the people, said over the past 16 months, the administration had operated on a tripod which he listed as security, job creation and infrastructure renewal.

According to him, “When I won the election, one of my priorities was to see how to improve on the ease of doing business in Lagos, and I also believe that we needed to carry out some kind of public sector reforms to drive the vision which we had actually set for ourselves, and we needed to also have a kind of structure and institutional framework that would drive the vision.

“The vision is very simple: we want a safer, cleaner and a more prosperous Lagos, and one of the structures would be if we want to tackle the issue of bureaucracy in the civil service, we needed to have a 24/7 one-stop shop office where we can drive investment, especially where our businessmen can actually walk into and get everything that they need. In going about that, we decided to come up with the office of Oversees Affairs and Investment, otherwise known as Lagos Global.”

Earlier, Special Adviser to the Governor on Overseas Affairs and Investments, Professor Ademola Abass, said part of the mandate of his office was to bring in FDI into Lagos and also investment generated within the country.

He said Lagos which had emerged as the fifth largest economy in Africa had a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that was bigger than those of Kenya and Ghana combined.