THE NATION ON SUNDAY OCTOBER 9, 2011
Interview
9
Me, go slow? Perish the thought! In his first term in office, Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola, (SAN) established a reputation as a pacesetting performer. Since being re-elected, however, some critics have charged that he has slowed down somewhat. Recently Sam Omatseye, chairman of the Editorial Board and Sanya Oni, Editorial Page Editor, spoke with the governor on issues ranging from the pace of governance, to federalism, and the challenge of the environment in Lagos State.
Babatunde Fashola W
hat areas would you consider as priority in your second term? For me the areas of priority are those that form the basis of my campaign. For me if we must have real value for democracy, electoral promises must be taken very seriously. Just like during the first term we tried to stick to the promises that we made. We intend to do the same this term. This is important because the wish of the people will never really be fully satisfied. That is why principle for decision making will always be the greatest good for the greatest number. If you seek public office, the important thing is to understand the environment, and assess the basket of needs to see which of them are uppermost in the expectations of the people. Given the equivalent economic circumstance, the skill that you think you have and the knowledge available, what you need is set the points on the table. These are do-able things and I commit to do them. That was one of the things we did after the elections, I believe, in 2007. Then I commissioned a poll, sampled the opinions of the people and found out what the expectations of the people were. Not
that we did not have an idea but we wanted to validate the people’s expectations. What came back to us informed us that the promises we made, substantially approximated these expectations and they relate to housing, employment, roads, particularly also suburbs – what you can call greater Lagos – those you call the suburban Lagos who felt that we had neglected them. First is, we told them we did not neglect them. Then we concentrated on some part; the feedback therefore validate that our strategy and anticipations were correct. We used the old 20 local government structure to do our plan. If we spread ourselves over 20 local governments we will not end, so we decided we would concentrate on 10 and in those places where most impact would be felt. We are now spreading out to the remaining 10. The strategy was to maintain substantially what we have done and concentrate on those places where we were not as active as we were expected to be. We think it is in that way that we can bring development across. So housing, waste water management there is a huge deficit; we will be focusing more on them in this dispensation. We
will also be focusing on our mortgage policies to provide access to housing, focusing more on education quality. I think we have done a lot on construction. We are focusing more on inside the classroom. The classrooms, no matter how beautiful, won’t teach. We are focusing now more on standards and what is going on inside. We have done teachers training; we are now looking at teacher-student relationships. How are they being assessed? How are they moving on? The issue of how to get better grades in their terminal examinations … those are the areas we are focusing on. There are perceptions that the rate at which you started in 2007 is not the rate at which you started now in your second term. Perceptions will be there, opinions will be free, facts will be sacred. I think also that there is a temptation to jump to the conclusion that the governor that you see running around is the action governor. Those who hold the opinion must be respected. But I disagree with it. I respect it because I understand why it is like that. There is a deficit of infrastructure and it speaks to that. And if they don’t see you running around commissioning and building things, they feel that nothing is happening, but the perception is wrong. And I will tell you why. People probably should pay more attention when we are presenting our budget. We are still operating the 2011 budget, and the thrust of that budget was that we will try to complete as many on-going projects as we could. And we will start only few new projects that we thought was compelling and we are able to harvest. Now we are running a budget that is finishing up and that is why you will see that in the last few days, we’ve started handing over those projects – housing, roads, rounding up waste management projects. So work is rounding off now. If you go to places like Idi Araba, you will see what we are doing there. The roads are finishing up - Mabo Road leading to LUTH, Akanro, leading to Ilasa. If you go to the other side of Mushin, you will recall that the progress of work there was obstructed by the police station. I have just acquired land to relocate that police station so that they can finish the work. I have been to Surulere, to inspect the progress on Akerele, which will finish at the end of October. Adelakun Road should finish, Bode Thomas Road is making progress, the interchange we are doing at Ogudu is almost completed. We are going to pour the asphalt. On the Falomo ramp, they are pouring the asphalt as I speak to you. So work is going on. Instead of me to go and sit down at projects where the contractors are clearly able to do their work, let me use my time more effectively to begin to do serious policy work. We just completed the consideration of the visitation report from LASU, the panel I inaugurated. It took us three days of regular executive council meeting on Monday from 9am- 8pm, and two emergency sessions to go through. Roughly we must have spent about 36 hours for detailed examination because those are the things that will endure. The buildings will come down in 20 years’
time or 30 years’ time. It is the institution, the policy underlining it that will remain and once those policies are there, whoever is there in future can erect another building. We passed series of laws to attend to issues that many people have neglected. We complain about security, but we are using a 97- year-old law to administer criminal justice administration. We are the only state that has reviewed the laws inherited from the colonial government for criminal law giving protection now to women advancing the frontiers of the law on rape and all of those things. We have carried on as if all of us are able bodies but there are physically challenged people in our society. We’ve passed that law again. And now, our work is to set up that agency, begin to establish the quota of the physically challenged people who I’m already employing. I challenge any government who has done that to produce the result. We are tasking our people, saying okay this was good but we didn’t like this, we are not getting enough of this. So it is taking us back to the table. What should we do more? What should we discard? So that what is we are doing. Apart from this, mile to mile, pound for pound, this government is quicker that the last government. The last time we were unknown so they expected nothing from us. With the support of the people of Lagos, we’ve been able to demonstrate that given half a chance we could work with the people of Lagos to make things better. And of course that has raised the bar of expectations. We are flattered by that expectation. It is a belief in our ability and we continue to do our best. If we look at it pound for pound, at this time 2007 I was in New York still setting out my plans; because I remember it coincided with the United Nations General Assembly meeting. I have been here working. So when you look at the pace from when I inaugurated the House of Assembly in 2007 to this time, this term was quicker. Look at the time it took to constitute the cabinet, the cabinet is quicker this time. We settled down to work very quickly but the work we are doing now is probably not typical of what people expect. We did not participate in the 100 days syndrome because we saw ourselves as a continuing government. Our 1600 days accounting period will come in October and we will explain what we have been doing since then. There are two sides to it; our strategy must change. We know now which contractor will deliver. We have been evaluating contractors who haven’t done well either in the quality of their jobs or in the timing of their delivery. And we are saying, look, we probably have to take you off our list and stay with those who are trusted and reliable. As at October- November 2007, we were still doing local government tour, familiarising people with the places they had to work. Now this team had a head-start. Then (2007) I spent two months meeting with the permanent secretaries at the time. That is not necessary now. It was necessary for me then but even more compelling for my deputy and Continued on page 70