Lagos State governor, Mr Babatunde Fashola (SAN), on Thursday, inaugurated the Lagos Liveable City Conference 2013, declaring that in grappling with challenges of managing the mega city that Lagos has become, the well-being of the people, including the man on the street, remained the central focus of the government.

The governor, who spoke at the opening of the conference on the theme, ‘Preparing for the mental and social health needs of the Lagos mega city,’ held at the Oriental Hotels, Lekki, explained that the project of governance in a mega city “is firstly and lastly for the people and about the people, including the man on the street who must be able to live in it. He must be able to breathe in it. He must be able to dream in it – dream for himself, for his family, for his succeeding generations. He must be safe in it.”

According to the governor, doing so, however, required that “he must know the rules of engagement in the defining transactions of his city – including his interactions with the law enforcement agents, his financial institutions, his moral and religious institutions.”

Governor Fashola challenged the participants to, in the course of the conference, come up with ideas and implementable suggestions on the listed matters, adding that he was already thinking about the structures that could be put in place to carry the inter-ministerial, cross-territorial project forward, beyond the deliberations of the conference.

He recalled the experience of a particular person who migrated to Lagos some years ago with no possessions, but just a beautiful voice and who had succeeded in living a respectable life, describing his experience as a symptom of the liveability in Lagos.

“The essence of this conference will be partly how we can multiply these opportunities in such a way that other people’s journeys to Lagos do not end in slavery, destitution, crime, drug abuse, mental illness or sudden and avoidable death,” he said.

The other main objective of the conference, according to the governor, would be the exposition of the responsibilities that come with rights and opportunities which constitutes responsibilities that emphasise the nature of the commonwealth from which the successes of liveable cities derive.

He identified the responsibilities to include prompt and voluntary payment of taxes by those who earned incomes, compliance with laws, rules and regulations, such as public health laws, sanitation laws, traffic laws, building and planning laws and so much more.

“Indeed they will also be defined by responsibilities driven by codes of morality and compassion for humanity that drives us to support the physically challenged, the elderly, the vulnerable and those with special needs,” he reiterated.

The governor said he was concerned and sometime obsessively so, about that man on the street as he was often nameless and faceless, but in reality had a name, a face and a story.

He stated that statistically, the man on the street was only one out of the over 21 million residents in Lagos and might be forgiven if he got lost in the crowd, just as he might be also be forgiven if he himself did not believe he mattered in the scheme of things.

“We may forgive him when he keeps his demands and expectations from the superstructure of the state minimal, with little faith in the likelihood of their fulfilment, and absolutely no sense that he has any power to demand or enforce their actualisation.

“The leader, the city planner, the dreamer of great city concepts, the builder of great iconic monuments may also be forgiven if, in the lofty scale of his vision, he has failed to take the little man on board,” the governor stated.

Governor Fashola recalled that during the last general elections, he had to request that the physically challenged people be allowed to vote first, adding that though all the people in his polling station agreed, the question he had asked himself is whether the same thing happened in all other polling stations and if it did not what can be done to ensure that it happens at the next election?

“How can we make it a way of life for us to create special queues for people with special needs in our airports, supermarkets and other public places? What must be our common strategy for responding to and supporting people with mental infirmity?”

“How do we evolve a strategy of re-integration for prisoners who have served out their punishment with demonstrable contrition and penitence, so that they can have a new beginning?” he asked.

SOURCE: www.tribune.com.ng/news2013/index.php/en/news/news-headlines/item/26342-we%E2%80%99re-working-to-make-lagos-a-liveable-mega-city-%E2%80%94fashola.html