Me, go slow? Perish the thought!
By Sam Omatseye and Sanya Oni 17 hours 46 minutes ago
Font size:   

Fashola
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.

What 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 violation 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 my Chief of Staff, because I have four years head-start ahead of them. If I took off without them behind me I will run into trouble. So we spent about two months touring Alausa, but now I have a deputy governor, who is eight years old in the saddle. So I delegate so much to her to do, and you see that she’s been very active and visible. That is the essence of this partnership and team work.

But that tells you that people are sensitive to what they see. For instance, people say the pace of fixing potholes – especially the inner roads – was different between then and now.
Again there is a sequence in that, even when we handle those potholes, we didn’t cover the distance of pothole margins in 2007, than we have covered in the last one year. What that says is that we have now institutionalized the capacity. Public Works Corporation is now up to its responsibility, it set up its own communication strategy, it is communicating with the people. It has its own telephone line and e-mail, to entertain complaints from the public. It has its own direct budget now from council, so it sequences its work and goes on with little supervision.
At that time (first term), I needed to be there, but now some of those operations are running almost semi-automated and which is what is important.

Earlier you mentioned the issue of housing … how far has the state government gone to institutionalize the capacity in terms of creating the mortgage institution to help in the delivery of houses?
The plan for housing was made in the course of campaign in 2007. At that time, what I felt the solution would be is the development of a mortgage institution where people can pay for their houses over their working life whether self-employed or in paid employment. But it has been a challenging experience given the variables that we do not control. We do not control the money market, interest rate and the exchange rate. We do not control the turnaround period at the port. All of these exacerbate the price of houses but I was convinced that with continuous thinking and probing, we would find something. Where we are now is that we would soon flag off the detailed policy. It is called "The Lagos Home Ownership Scheme". We’ve developed an acronym for it called "Lagos Homes" spelled "HOMS". We’ve opened the website where all of the materials, information of where houses are, how to calculate your mortgage, applied details of your salary and all the facts are already on-line. There are so many components and layers beyond just building houses. If you build houses and you don’t do some of the things we are doing, the people you are targeting to own the homes would end up as tenants in their houses. So the website is part the process to open it up. You don’t have to know anybody. If they have 10 houses available, on the basis of first come first served, we assess your ability to pay and you win.
You pay 30 percent of the price of the house that you choose, take your keys and pay your monthly mortgage payment until you finish paying. We are starting on the floor of 10-year repayment, hoping to graduate to as much 20 or 25 years later as we go ahead. That will be dictated by the energy we can inject and the dynamics of the financing options that emerge as we go on. But we think we have found the basis to start. We have also evolved a standard type housing model. It is a four-floor design, three floors plus the ground floor. Each block will have 12 flats. On each floor there will be three flats: a one bedroom, a two bedroom and a three bedroom. The reason we settled for that is we see that our society is being stratified along class lines and it’s dangerous. We wanted people – slightly privileged, not too privileged, and senior civil servants – to raise their children together. That was how we were raised. So it was important we make it spacious with standardize space designs, for two-bedroom flat, one bedroom with standard space so that is how it will be built and that is what will be seen when it is built.
Government will provide soft subsides as we go on; the ‘t’s and ‘i’s are being dotted; the scheme is already on its way.
You will see that in the last few days I have been handing over completed houses and I will continue to do that. We have already also started some schemes. We are now going to start another round of houses fitting those models wherever we can find land.
We have also introduced arbitration into dispute resolution because that is the biggest disincentives to investors. It is difficult for them to re-possess houses when people default, so beneficiaries are going to sign that they may not go to regular courts. If there is a dispute you go to arbitration, you will share the cost of arbitration which I think will not exceed 20% of the profit. So it is going to be commercially responsive. So we think that by that there is going to be much more investment of private sector building houses because government alone cannot build all houses.
We have also agreed on some other policies aimed at inducing private partnership and investment. We are talking to some banks as well as gradually working through all of the hurdles. You are going to swear that you do not own any other property in Lagos to benefit because we are targeting first-home owners. If we find out at any period at all that you own any property, you lose the house.
That’s why it has taken about three years of working quietly within government, outside government in partnership – long lines of meetings but right now we are very close. That’s why we intervened in the tenancy and landlord relationship and people misunderstood, but I think the response speaks to the currency of the issue. Not everybody likes every policy. It will favour some people and leave some out. For example, as we are all unhappy that we don’t have electricity, some people are happy and will become unhappy when we have electricity. The point is that even for the landlord, I can say confidently, that this law is also in their interest. I know some properties that are empty today because people cannot accumulate two years rent. So you have wasting assets that are not earning income. Even some new highbrow houses wait on the shelf for two years which shouldn’t be the case. Part of the problem is that it also compounds the difficulty of evicting defaulting tenants because it is not that the defaulting tenant does not want to leave but because he/she will be thinking of how to get so much money to pay for two years rent to take a new house. There are intrinsic benefits if we allow the law to work.
This system where you ask people who earn their income in arrears on a monthly basis, to come and pay rent in advance on a three-year basis … the truth is that we are all bearing that cost. If you don’t have something and you suddenly produce it you must have got it from somewhere and you have to replace it. Its replacement cost comes in high cost of transport, high cost of garri and high cost of tomatoes; so what the landlord gains on the straight road, he loses at the bend.
We are not in any way regulating prices. We know that it is a demand-and-supply issue. The landlord and tenancy law is not a substitute for us to do what we need to do which is to provide houses for the people at affordable prices.

There is this perception that the security situation in Lagos has relapsed after what was noticeably massive improvement. Do you agree with the observation?
To be honest, your observations are right. You cannot be a perpetual oasis success amidst despair. We are interwoven part of this federation. Our successes compound our challenges. I know thousands of people who have relocated from other states because of security. They add to the number that those successful policemen now have to police. If you have to look after 10 children as a father, and then your cousins and your brothers come and dump all their children in your house, your responsibility is increased, your margin of efficiency thins out. Of course, we also saw during the electoral period – some of the fallout of our electoral style is that people hired thugs; some gave money, some guns. The people who got money used it to buy a gun. Now the electoral period is over, the regular allowance that kept them in form is gone. Elections have been won and lost, so the guns must be used. We are mopping up those guns now. It was the same thing in 2007 but the escalation this time is not as high as 2007. We anticipated all of these so we are mopping up.
The potency of our security system has also increased. A few things have been done – the Inspector General of Police has also responded to our appeals – but it’s not all of these things that we discuss. Today we have five additional area commands as against eight, so we are going to take policing closer to the people. They have put five area commands for us. Alimoso will have its own command now. It used to take police from Ogba, Ibeju Lekki, all the way to Epe was being police for Lion Building. Ikorodu was being policed from Ogudu; Ikorodu will now have its own area command. There will be a new area command at Elemoro in Ibeju Lekki area that will stand between Victoria Island and Epe. There will be one now in Ilase for the riverine communities.
We need money now to build the area command but we’ve already started working with whatever we have. We’ve provided vehicles and this has partly begun to show us that we are on the right path. We will be re-equipping some of the vehicles, we need to replace for patrol, again the cost of fuel. That is why one wonders when oil worker say they are going on strike. They are shutting security against themselves because without fuel, police men can’t go out, without fuel we can’t carry refuse.

Let’s look at the issue of federal infrastructure in Lagos. How are you contending with this because it also affects your assessment at the end of the day. Some people don’t know the difference between what is federal and what is state.
Let me disagree with you there, our people are sufficiently knowledgeable to know that the airport road belongs to the Federal Government. I am telling them now that Apapa – Oshodi- Oworonsoki expressway belongs to them. Lagos Badagry express road that I am fixing belongs to them (Federal) and so many others. Ejigbo road is their project. That is where they take the bulk of petroleum products. It is a shared responsibility, and I am doing a lot to discharge my share because when we build the road they will come and put their FRSC vehicle there, but they will never bring the money to refund what we have done. Currently, they are assessing and we hope that this assessment will lead to reform so that we can do more. But essentially, it is a shared responsibility; we dare not to drop the ball in those places where we have sole responsibility.

Let’s move to transportation matters. Here, we have in mind, the Lagos light rail project. Can you give us a progress report?
Well it was a dream and the reality of that dream are manifesting. The project is within touching distance. The only thing that stands in the way of that dream now is money. The more money I get, the quicker the project. Our concession operators and partners are doing their work. They are backed by some of the biggest trustees in the business.
Our responsibility to provide the hardware and their responsibility is to provide concession and the rolling stock and management. So everybody is in it. Contractors are fully mobilized; they are working seven days a week, but if they get more money I assure you they will work 24 hours. Most of the materials are in stock. Every day you go there, you see progress. Out of the basket that I have, I still have to deal with inner roads, hospitals, build roads, etc.

What are your reflections on the recent flood and the future status of Lagos?
When I became governor, one of my greatest fears was the risk of Lagos being submerged by water because I saw what was going on in other parts of the world. The commitment I made at the time was to pay more attention to the environment. That led me to put in a strategy. Unfortunately not many people listened, because we sometimes learn the hard way. The interest in climate change since July has risen no doubt. The pain the people suffered on July 10 would have been minimal had the people listened to us.
In 2008, we built a resettlement centre in the event of flood because it is a natural disaster you can’t stop. But your responsibility will be what you do when it happens. Can you save lives? I’m proud to say that we did.
When Ajegunle got flooded in 2010 toward Ikorodu, we didn’t lose any life; we evacuated all of the people. The children went to school. Parents went to work. Children were born there and for one year we kept them in the camp. It was a product of visionary thinking and plan. We are building another centre in Alimosho, and we chose the location strategically. We chose high ground. I listened recently to a religious programme where a religious leader claimed that climate change is a problem of the Europeans. Nothing can be farther from the truth.
When you calculate the number of lives that have been lost globally in the past one year without war, it speaks to the seriousness of the issue. In the context of Lagos, we had 16 hours of rain that did not stop and delivered at least 240 litres of rain in one day.
While all of that was going on, drainage was working. Before the rain stopped after 10pm, I was managing the situation, giving direction that students should not come to school the next day. But by 7 am next day, Lagos was back to normal. New York did not have as much rain, they didn’t return to work in 24 hours, and I think that my predecessors – those who planned the state deserve some credit. I didn’t start the master plan for the drainage, it started since 1974. Time after time we’ve implemented those plans and we are still going on.
Now, we are not out of the woods and when there is rain we are grieved. We should be careful of the aftermath and so we should stop building on drainage lines, stop throwing our dirt in the drainage, because if water can’t go it will burst out. So people should listen to us. We gave three months notice of the risk but people chose to experience it first to learn. So really I hope that when we make announcement next time people will take it seriously.
Lagos is a city state on the move, competing globally. The character of the economy of the state will continue to change. I know a number of new businesses that have emerged, we should know that Lagos may lose the character of one business, but it will gain the character of another business because of technology. It remains attractive for innovation, high tech, finance trade and service

http://www.thenationonlineng.net/2011/index.php/news/22253-me-go-slow-perish-the-thought.html

Brilliant interview.

succinctly said