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Lagos State is the most economically important state in Nigeria and can be described as the 5th largest economy in Africa if it were a country. Apart from that, the state prides itself with a population above 20 million but faces one big challenge, which is quality management of its assets, population (people) and brand.
TheNewsGuru.com sat down for an exclusive interview with Lagos State Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Mr. Steve Ayorinde, who articulately narrated the journey of a mega city travelling on concrete plans to its destination – becoming first smart-city in Africa under the leadership of a smart Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode.
When asked what it feels like to be in his capacity, Ayorinde who was sworn in by Ambode on October 19, 2015 as Commissioner for Information and Strategy said working for Lagos State is like working for a country.
He added, “It is a job, it is another assignment and every assignment has its challenges and peculiarities. But of course, you are right, Lagos is not just one of the most economically viable states in Nigeria, it is the most economically viable state in Nigeria, it is the richest state in Nigeria, and if it were to be a country it will be the fifth largest economy in Africa and of course because it is also the most populous as a state that also comes with its own challenges and therefore if you are privileged to be the image maker or the spokesperson of such a state it is like speaking for a country.”
“With all the diversity, with all the eagerness to be at par with other mega cities of the world, it is a 24/7 job- that is if 24/7 is enough. It is tough, it is challenging, but it is very doable and that is why we are happy with the results that we have had so far.In less than two years, everybody agrees that the administration of Governor Akinwunmi Ambode has not done badly.”
Speaking generously on the strides and plans of the Ambode-led government, Ayorinde reveals insights on what to expect of Lagos in the nearest future. [Excerpts]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-povlDqnuik&spfreload=10
Before taking the job, were you ever intimidated by the BIG SHOES (strides) achieved by Ambode’s predecessor, Babatunde Fashola?
Not at all, recall that governor Ambode campaigned on ‘continuity’. Yes! There might be BIG SHOES but Lagos has always had the ‘BIG SHOES’ right from the era of ‘baba-kekere’, Lateef Jakande and then the era of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu who laid a solid foundation which Babatunde Fashola built on, it was obvious that there was no other way to go but up, which was why our campaign centred not just on continuity but continuity with improvement. And you have seen that not only has this administration continued on the path of excellence and progress whose foundation was laid in 1999 and followed through within the period of eight years spent by Fashola.
You can see that we have also improved on it in every aspect of governance in terms of security, job creation, in terms of almost doubling the budget that we met in 2015, which was about N500bn to almost N900bn that we have done in 2017.
It means that we have expanded the business area, the opportunities, revenue profile and everything we met on ground. Times have changed without a doubt, but what the Ambode-led government has succeeded in showing is that it has the capacity not only to continue with the giant stride but also to add to the layer of progress that Lagosians expected. So there was never at any point any sense of intimidation at all, a man who is up to the task was the one that was given the mandate and he his delivering on his job quite well.
Ambode is more of a ‘doing’ and not a ‘talking’ governor, besides the results what is his biggest strength?
His biggest strength is having ‘the spirit of excellence’. But first, it is important to correct that he is not the talking type. With the enormity of the challenges we have at the moment not only as a state or as a country, it therefore can’t be an era of excuses or talk-shops, you have to perform, it is an era of performance.
Yes! The governor is an accountant and you know that most accountants tend to speak with figures. I think what is essential is that Lagosians are lucky that they have someone who understands the power of finance and can manage resources, who was also lucky to have been there when Lagos ran into troubled waters.
When Lagos funds were seized by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, he was the accountant-general then and was very instrumental to what Lagos is now enjoying – the frog jump the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of Lagos State witnessed, from a paltry N600m monthly to N6bn and then to N10bn, N15bn and more which is what we have now.
So, I think anybody who will run a city state that is almost like a country at this time should ideally do less of talk and more of performance.
Every state that you have where things are not working, the first port of call is Lagos. So you need a governor who understands how to deal with all those vagaries- burgeoning population, pressure on hospitals, schools because excuses will not suffice, it is thinking out of the box that will do.
Which is why you have seen what we have done in terms of how traffic is controlled, adding a layer of progress on security apparatus and ensuring that 21 million Lagosians and still counting, are always, every time adequately informed about what is going on in the state.
I think people applaud that much more than a situation of all talks but no action. But in any case, what his communication strategy has also shown is that you get more for less, little talk but he is still the most reported governor online and traditional media.
With the number of events he attends and activities of the state that he has to superintend over, I do not think any governor comes any close. If you talk about one-on-one interviews like others will do, he his having less of that, but without a doubt he is having more of result oriented talks, which is to engage the issues, talk about development of the state, how the budget will impact on the citizens, how the state will be secure and safeguarded, the things that we are expecting a proactive government to do, that is what the governor is more interested in.
What are the expansion plans of Lagos Govt to ensure a better place to welcome visitors especially in areas of power generation and infrastructure?
Apart from the visitors we also recognize that there are internal economic migrants into Lagos, they troop into the state seeking greener pastures. There is a report which states that of every 100 persons that come into Lagos (in the last two years) only about 10-15 return to where they are coming from.
We can’t do everything at a time, there is no way you will know how many internal economic migrants at any given space will come into Lagos, and for Lagos to prepare to welcome everybody will simply mean Lagos is now playing the role of federal government, or pseudo-federal government or that it is subsidizing other states, which in actual fact is what Lagos state is doing.
There is little that a state government can do in the area of power generation, but that is not to say that we will fold our arms and not rise up to the challenges. We have a ministry for energy and mineral resources through which we are carrying out our programmes on ‘light-up- Lagos’ projects, and you will see what we have done beautifully in terms of street lights. There are a number of interventions in several communities that have not had light in more than 16 years; in Ibeju Lekki, in some parts of Ikorodu, Badagry, we have intervened to put them in the national grid, some which required transformers, we have provided.
But if you talk in terms of expansion programmes, number one, in terms of space there is little that the state can do.
We have the smallest land mass, as small as it is, almost a quarter of the land mass is water, you can’t build houses as such on water. The advantage you can take on water is to make maximum use of water transportation which is why we are canalising the water ways in Lagos now, and of course the so called marine economy- fishing farming and more.
We are doing our best to create opportunities in terms of jobs, to ensure that security is top notch, provision of high qualitative education in public schools, quality health provisions and things that will entertain them in the areas of sport, arts and culture.
Government is an enabler, it can’t provide all the jobs, even security is a federal responsibility. What Lagos State is doing is to assist the federal government, show leadership by donating the largest asset in the history of Nigeria by any of the states to support the police, to rebrand and re-kit the RRS so that not only are we able to better take care of Lagosians but also visitors that are trooping in on a daily basis.
Unfortunately, we are not able to control the influx, because as more states continue to struggle with their finances, with their social infrastructure, Lagos tends to be the next port of call. But what Lagos will not allow is for visitors to import into Lagos what has been rejected in other states.
One good example is the issue of commercial motorcycles, there are a number of states in Nigeria including the FCT where commercial motorcycles have been banned, and you can’t therefore come into Lagos to ride your motorcycle as a commercial motorcyclist on the highways that Lagos state has restricted such. You have to bear in mind that what we have in Lagos is not a total ban, it might be desirable for lots of Lagosians that like you have in Cross River, Abuja and Enugu among others to have a total ban of commercial motorcyclists, and that might actually be the direction Lagos is going, we are not there yet. We have not pronounced a total ban on Okada, what we are saying is that out of the 9000 roads that you have in lagos, you are only prohibited on 473 roads, less than 500 highways.
Another one will be, when Lagos State Government says we do not want street hawking or trading on the highways that it is banned, and it has been banned since 2003 when Asiwaju Bola Tinubu was the governor of the state and we have it on good authority that 80% of street hawkers in Lagos come from one single state in Nigeria. We acknowledge that things might be a lot more difficult in a lot more places outside Lagos.
That is fine! Lagos will welcome everybody that will be law abiding that will conduct himself or herself in a manner that is befitting of a decent individual and will look for legitimate opportunities for work, for schooling but not to flout the law, go on highways constituting dangers to yourselves and to other motorists and then transforming at night to armed robbers those are things Lagos frowns at.
So how much more can we expand? I will say as much as necessary, but our message to visitors is that Lagos will continue to welcome visitors but the state will not condone acts that will put other people’s lives in danger.
The Danfo drivers [Yellow commercial buses] are equally on hot seat, are there alternative plans to engage them?
Absolutely, that is a policy that will be executed in the course of the year. If you recall, since last year, we have been having series of meetings with stakeholders concerned in the business of mass transportation – particularly the road transport workers, Tricycle association, Okada association etc.
The vision of the government is clear, it is part of the multimodal transportation system that we believe befits a mega city like Lagos. And don’t forget that we are not necessarily bringing a new policy, Lagos of old used to be like that- it used to be a lot more law abiding than now.
Like I said earlier, economic realities particularly in other states forced many to see Lagos as the new Mecca and that has caused a lot of things to change. What the governor is trying to do is to return the Lagos to the good old days when things were in order, when commuters can be comfortable, when laws will not be flouted because people think that ‘Lagos is a no man’s land’ and there are no rules, we are bringing back the rules for the good of the people.
What is the next level for a city of this importance, Africa’s number one city in terms of population, possibly in terms of resources, are we going to be stocked with our old ways of doing things? No!
Therefore, we said to ourselves that there are better ways to move people from point A to B in a more convenient way, environmentally conducive and quicker. All these can’t be found in the yellow buses, but first thing is there will be alternatives, there will be decent smaller commuter buses that we are bringing, guess how they will operate?
The buses will have their routes advertised on them. If you are moving from Maryland to Surulere, or to CMS you know the bus you are taking, not a bus conductor announcing to you that this is where you are going, and if it turns out that after one kilometre he doesn’t have enough passengers he changes his route because he has seen other passengers. That will no longer happen under the new regime that is coming.
In any case, there will not be any job loss for these people. First the area that will be of primary concern is the metropolis, we are not taking the yellow buses out of the whole of Lagos in the first instance, they will still be able to work in community, local government roads, but not on the highways, and other major roads within the metropolis, say Lekki, Ajah, Victoria Island, Third Mainland Bridge, GRA Ikeja, Festac, Ojota.
The yellow buses can move into the hinterland but there will be sufficient and more environmentally friendly buses that will be provided before that is done. The buses will be air conditioned with provisions for physically challenged people etc.
Drivers will work there, bus assistants will work there, so what it means is that we won’t just be able to employ erstwhile drivers of yellow buses but we will also be able to employ bus assistants that read tickets, sign and issue tickets and operate computers. Who says they can’t even be graduates, so far they are adequately remunerated.
That is the vision that the governor has for the state, it is not that the so called ‘Danfo drivers’ are species who only drive ‘danfo’. How many drivers will you even find today that can operate phone or use WhatsApp?.
So it is not about taking jobs away from anybody it is about making life better for those who are in the sector. Like people are already doing, from Ikorodu going to Marina, they now leave their cars because of the convenience of going with BRT – it takes a dedicated lane, it is air –conditioned, it is faster.
It is not about taking Danfo away from Lagos roads alone, we are also expanding the BRT corridors, we are starting this year – the Oshodi Iyana-Ipaja axis. The more we have of those BRT the less we will have the need for Danfo that are not ideal and tidy. Let us raise our game with the cities we want to compete with, like Rio, Mumbai, like Johannesburg, Cairo or other ones in the West.
Did LAKE rice meet all the projections set ahead of it as an initiative?
It met with our projections. Again, that was a project that we just didn’t rush into. It was in March 2016 that we signed a MoU with Kebbi state, MoU that was not limited to the provision of cheaper rice but of course for dairy products, for every other area of agricultural produce generally. And you will soon see in the course of the year that our partnership with Kebbi is not limited to rice.
Specifically, on the rice, I think the entire world acknowledged in December that Lagos and Kebbi did something fantastic. Think of just a bag of rice, an average family in Lagos or anywhere in Nigeria without a bag of rice during the yuletide. This is because it has become our number one staple; it is part of our life. When people send out formal invitations and you are required to respond that you will attend or not they put R.S.V.P there, you know it has become part of our parlance to interpret that as ‘Rice-and-Soup-Very-Plenty’.
Just like you will have in China, rice has become a major staple in Lagos. Therefore, a thinking government thought of the fact that with economic recession, how it will be in December when majority of your people can’t afford the major celebrations and then you now deny them the opportunity to buy rice. How many people can really afford the N19, 000, N25, 000 that people would have bought rice at the time without government’s intervention? I think that was a government with a human face to say that it is the duty of government to meet the need of the people, crash price of rice and make it available at least one per family, and even beyond Christmas and New Year LAKE rice is still available.
As a matter of fact, what we are now doing is to increase the pace of work at Imota mills in Ikorodu where Lagos too will be able to mill its own rice and bag it for an all year round supply to Lagosians.
Moving Lagos from Mega City to a smart city, can you give us an insight into the new Lagos?
It is very straightforward; you are a mega city by United Nations’ standard, once you crossed the 15 million population mark, which Cairo used to be the number one Mega City in Africa at that time before Lagos overtook it. Mega city is a game of numbers, but in urban planning nowadays, mega city is not just viewed in terms of numbers alone, it is also in terms of economic relevance and urban development.
A mega city without a doubt will have the 15 million people, Lagos is much more than that, but then what are the things you are putting in the state to make it safer, livable and to make it prosperous. Those are the considerations people look at to say are you truly a mega city? But we are now saying that, yes! We have tried in fulfilling all those requirements but the buzzword all over the world right now is that deemphasize the issue of size and concentrate on deliverables, make your city smarter and that gets us to the idea of ‘Smart City’ which Dubai actually propagated and extended if not exported to other countries like Kochi in India, Malta among others.
We thought that by headcount, resources, GDP we are a mega city. But is that all we want?
That we go to the beach and see thousands of people, go to the stadium see hundreds of thousands? No! We also want Lagos to be smarter, what makes a smart city?
It is a city that is driven essentially by technology, it is a city that relies a lot less on road transportation, a city that encourages people to leave their cars at home and use technology to aid transportation, use technologies to aid security which is why we are rolling out 13, 000 CCTV over the course of the year and the first half of next year so that we can do a lot more than donating vehicles, power bikes, bullet proof vests to the Nigerian police, we want to secure the state in a smarter way, which is to have the CCTV camera installed, have a command and control centre as we do now.
So that we can have a panoramic view of the entire state from the point of view of technology. And if there is an armed robbery case or an untoward situation in any part of the state, you only need to get a recording from the CCTV camera closest to the place beam it at the command and control centre, share with security operatives and the media to ensure easy and smooth apprehension of such criminality.
We are happy now that because we desire to be a smart city we are now hoping to use technology to better secure the state, because you can be a mega city without being a smart city and vice versa.
Lagos is investing a lot in boosting entertainment sector, what are the gains to expect from this?
The gains are many; to establish Lagos family as the preferred destination in terms of tourism, hub of creative economy in Africa, home to Nollywood, biggest hip-hop industry in Africa and biggest stand-up comedy in Africa. Our aim is to continue to support the industry so that it can continue to be the number one job creator in the state and in the country. The amount of resources that the creative sector controls is huge, which is why we have in our budget the construction of cinemas in all the five divisions of the state as well as to start work on five new stadia across the divisions. The youth population is growing, without sufficient jobs you don’t want to add to the challenges at hand by not providing for the future.
We have just had the Rasheed Gbadamosi expo and one of the defining elements of that expo is the fact even students were part of it – from all our tertiary institutions, Yabatech, LASU, UNILAG, LASPOTECH – setting the creative ones among them as an example to others to emphasise that there are so many other things that they can do that will be beneficial to them and the society other than hanging out on the street and creating havoc.
So entertainment and development of the art will continue to be an integral part of the vision of this administration, because that is probably one of the two or three sectors in the world that may not even witness recession, because no matter how bad the economy is people will still look for things to give them succour, go to concerts, theatres even if it is not free. It is incumbent on the government therefore to continue to encourage such a sector not just because it is necessary but because without the sector being there the danger for the society is better imagined.
Why is the government taking interest in developing other divisions of Lagos like Epe, Badagry…what is the attraction?
When governor Ambode was campaigning first as an aspirant and then as a candidate of the party one key word that he was always stressing was the fact that his government will be a government of inclusiveness, that no part of Lagos will be left behind.
You will see it in the way we are developing economy, infrastructure, not just Mainland and Lagos Island, what of Ikorodu, Epe and Badagry? You know, with all the vaste opportunities that are in Badagry, that area can be the tourism hub of Africa if properly harnessed, which is what this government is trying to do. We are now trying to work on the entire stretch of the Marina in Badagry, we are taking a new museum there so that when people say they are going to Lagos, they can also say they spent a given time in Badagry.
So the interest is that the other divisions also deserve to enjoy everything that Ikeja as Lagos capital or Lagos Island, Ikoyi, Victoria Island as the economic nerve centre gets.
When we reconstructed the whole idea of Lagos countdown and turned it to one Lagos fiesta, expanded it to five divisions so that Badagry, Epe will enjoy same. Similarly, when we would rehabilitate two per one Local Government Area (LGA) or Local Community Development Area (LCDA), which means that be it in Epe or Badagry they will have the same. So for the first time we have a government which is not only delivering on its promise but is ensuring that every part that he said he will touch has been touched.
Victims of Oke Afa disaster are complaining that promises made to them are yet to be fulfilled by Lagos State government?
This is not the first time we have heard that this year, what we have done is to look at the books and see how the promises made with the federal government, because what actually caused that incident happened within the territory of the federal government, which of course necessitated the former president at the time visiting the scene and of course made promises.
So what this administration will do is to revisit those promises and work with the federal government to ensure that the families of the victims are compensated in line with the promises made and I have no doubt that the governor will decisively attend to that.
Why is the Lagos APC magic not working at the centre?
We should acknowledge that the times are tough, there is a recession that was caused largely by the inactivity and indiscretion of the previous government largely, because you don’t just enter into recession, you know things would have built up over time. We shouldn’t forget the fact that this is a government at the centre that is trying its best to win on other scores. This is a federal government that campaigned on a tripod, to fix the country, to fix the economy, to better secure the country and to fight corruption.
We have seen what the government has been doing on security, it has succeeded significantly in bringing the scourge of Boko Haram down.
On anti-corruption, you will see it is not doing badly in areas where it is obvious that people are transgressed , for the first time we see how judges are not spared. So I think in those two areas, significant progress has been made.
But in the area of economy, the tide is heavy, and it seems we are swimming against the tide, but that doesn’t mean we should give up, I think we should give the government a chance. The race is for 48 months we have barely spent about 19-20 months, I think we should allow the federal government to probably tackle the issues at hand, I have no doubt that the federal government has the capacity to deal with the situation.