Recession: Nigerian leaders should look for solution, stop lamenting —Oshiomhole

Edo State governor, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, has urged the nation’s political leaders to stop lamenting over the poor state of the nation’s economy, but rather proffer solutions on how the country could get out of its current recession.

This was just as the governor paid glowing tributes to Governor Ambode’s strides in vehicular traffic management in the state, saying that Ambode had demonstrated that leaders were not supposed to lament what did not work, but to proffer solutions.

“You have shown that our task as leaders is not to lament what does not work, but to think through how to make it work and that you are doing; that you have done and I know that you will continue to do,” he said.

The governor said this on Wednesday, while speaking as guest of honour at the closing ceremony of National Women Conference, organised by the Committee of Wives of Lagos State Officials (COWLSO) in Lagos, emphasising that lamentation would not bail the country out of its economic downturn.

The governor, who spoke at a programme that had in attendance the Lagos State governor, Mr Akinwunmi Ambode, his Kebbi State counterpart, Senator Atiku Bagudu and other prominent Nigerians,  however, urged women to be resilient in the face of the present adversity and demonstrate their potentials as great economists.

Speaking further on vehicular traffic management in Lagos State, Governor Oshiomhole recalled that his coming to the venue of the conference was smooth-sailing, in spite of initial fears that he would spend like two hours to drive to Ikoyi from Ikeja Airport.

“As I was coming to this place today, I noticed something that I think is worth celebrating because of its impact in helping family unity and family union. Why will you wake up at 5am or 4am just to be at work at 8am devoting all the time to traffic?

“The reason was because of the huge traffic challenges, but when I received the invitation for today’s event and I was advised that it was 10am and I know my brother, Governor Ambode keeps to time, I said we have to get up early and I told my wife that we are going to spend about two hours from Ikeja Airport to get to Ikoyi, but I was very pleasantly surprised that coming from Ikeja to this place, it was like flying a first class aircraft from Alausa to the heart of Ikoyi.

Wife of the governor of Lagos State, Mrs Bolanle Ambode, earlier in her address, said the 3-day conference had opened the mind of participants to new ideas, information and statistics, saying that the women were better empowered to become change agents.

Mrs Ambode explained that the success story of the conference could not have been without the excellent cooperation of the women who formed COWLSO, counseling them to put all what they were taught at the conference into use in their respective offices and homes.

“When I got here, I was asking the governor on how he did it and he shared with me the interventions put in place within months of his assumption of office that have helped to completely reorder the traffic in Lagos, such that when we slow down to about 20km per hour, we noticed people asking what is causing this go slow but things have changed so much,” he said.

According to him, the interventions of Governor Ambode was not only reducing traffic and fuel consumption, but was also bringing back the good times of family bonding as travel time had reduced.

Oshiomhole said, over the years as governor of Edo State, he had had cause to learn and borrow from the template Lagos was running, expressing optimism that his successor and governor-elect, Mr Godwin Obaseki, would be willing to borrow a leaf from the COWLSO Conference as well as the traffic management strategy of Lagos.