As an elder statesman who served as a commissioner under Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, what significant difference would you say Lagos has experienced before and after 1999?
Going down memory lane on happenings in Nigeria before 1999, we were deep in the thrills of militarism for a number of years from Jan 1st, 1984 to May, 29th 1999, that’s quite a number of years if you do the arithmetic.
During that time, we were strictly under military decrees, edicts and there was a total absence of democracy, it was a rule of force by the military establishment, and given the nature of the military is to obey the last order, orders were issued, there was no single iota of pretenses to carry along the public because the military usually shot its way to power, there were no campaigns, no programs, no policies, no elections nothing, so you found yourself listening to the radio and just hearing about a change of government. Once the military got there,
they did everything according to their whims and caprices and so the nation was held down, held by the jugular for those number of years, and it took its toll on the development of the country, on the progress of the country, on the socio-economic and political emancipation of the country. And some of us were in the vortex of it all, because of the absence of democracy, there was no parliament, no houses of assembly, no senate or house of reps, in short, there was no legislature, no participatory democracy, no representative of the people to promote democracy.
Shortly before Democracy Day on May 29th, 1999, Gen Abdulsallam had opened the political space for political activities; of course, parties were formed but the major ones being Alliance for Democracy (AD), the PDP and a host of others. Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu came back, and insisted he was coming to take part in political activities. So he did and we joined forces together. I remember he actually came back wanting to go to the Senate, but by the time he got back a lot of things happened to change his mind, and I remembered it was in my office at Concord; myself, Segun Babatope, Tunji Bello and himself in my office when I said “look, my own view was that he had to go for the governorship because it would afford us the opportunity of coming to implement the programs and policies and philosophies of June 12 which we were all part of but that had been aborted” and he agreed.
We took on the whole challenge, we went into the campaign and after a very acrimonious primary and highly contentious election, he won. Then we started the business of forming a transition committee and sub-committee, for conceptualizing various policies and programs for the incoming Asiwaju government, and the rest is history. That’s what happened before 1999.
Primarily, the main thing responsible for what you see in Lagos constituency today, the progress and development trajectory of Lagos constituency today is due to the political system Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu instituted and the enduring structures he put in place starting from 1999. I would say with all sense of modesty that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s political system is about the only one that I can see in the political firmament of Nigeria since 1999 that has been well grounded philosophically and ideologically.
If you look at the various political systems in other parts of Nigeria, you would have what I call an agglomeration of interests, views, groups forming political parties. Ideally, by definition that should be it, a political party should be an agglomeration of this divergent interest and all that, but the demarcation point with that of the Tinubu’s system is that those other ones are not grounded in any philosophical framework or ideological perspective, perception or even inclination.
The other parties and the other political systems in other parts of Nigeria, emerged largely “in my own view” as a platform to protect peculiar interests, not necessarily platforms for altruistic purposes for the larger interest of the public, and for the envisioning of deep-seated political structures that would usher in real progress and developments. That has been the marked difference between the Tinubu system and those other systems that have been the necessary ingredient for the continuity of the Bola Tinubu system in Lagos state, not necessarily without prejudice to the individuals that have occupied offices in Lagos state. It is because of the system and the endurance of the system put in place, which then means that anybody who comes in as the driver of that system would literally have little room to maneuver but to go forward, and build on the structure that he/she meets in place.
That continuity has largely helped the state that is Lagos state in forging ahead with its giant developmental strides, progressive policies, implementations of social services that seek to make life convenient and comfortable for its inhabitant. That’s really the issue, the kernel of the issue. It is the philosophical ground norm of the Bola Tinubu political system that has ensured continuity and the focus on the programs and policies that in totality ensure the convenience of Lagosians and that has attracted people from all works of life from other states in Nigeria into Lagos, which is why today Lagos is bustling as it seems with population. Everybody is coming to Lagos because Lagos works.
The opposition parties are at liberty to spew out inanities and mouth slogans that literally or metaphorically and figuratively means nothing. It is just in the nature of oppositions to criticize whatever it is because they also are hanging to seize power. So whether you are the best performer in the world your opposition must seek to run you down. I don’t take such things seriously because you also have to put these “opposition” and its people into proper perspective and context. What is the track record of achievement of any leading light of this opposition? What? Where? None… practically none or very negligible, so therefore, they don’t have the basis to make very intellectually rigorous criticism. If you must criticize, you must put in place viable and constructive alternatives, they are not bringing any alternatives to the table, they just say “oh, this is a one-man rule for 20 years”, compare and contrast in other climes or in other states in Nigeria. What has been the developmental trajectory in those other states? They are all trailing behind Lagos state which says implicitly there’s something good in that so-called“ one-man rule for 20 years”, and now come to the nitty gritty of it, I would disagree vehemently that it’s a one-man rule, No, it is a system, that’s why I ab-initio analysed the major difference between the Tinubu system and those other systems. Tinubu has put in a system that is grounded in a forward-looking progressive philosophical framework and it has an ideological perspective. Now when you want to put a system in place, you have to establish the philosophy behind that system. That is the envisioning; what do you seek to achieve? The methodology, how do you seek to achieve it? Then the knowledge. There are three attributes of leadership in any clime of progressive leadership. The attributes are vision, knowledge, and the will which is the courage. You must have the vision, you must be able to envision long term goals for your society or the sphere in which you operate, you must have the knowledge to translate the vision into reality and to chart the methodology of achieving those goals and lastly you must have the will, that is the courage to push through those policies that would achieve your set goals. Those three attributes are fortunately for Lagos State embedded in Bola Tinubu, and the bane of the progress of Nigeria till date has been that we haven’t had a leader nationally that has those three attributes combined. We’ve had one or two with one aspect of those three attributes or two aspects of the attributes, but we haven’t been lucky to have a leader with the three major attributes combined in him. We are lucky to have had that in Lagos. I have worked with Tinubu, I have known him, I have been with him in the trenches during the NADECO days before we got into office, I know the stuff he is made of, he is a man with vision, he can envision long term goals and I would give you examples. Take the revenue of Lagos State for instance, when we came in 1999, the IGR (internally Generated Revenue) of Lagos State was 600 million Naira, what we were receiving from the federal government as allocation was a little over 1 billion Naira, meanwhile the wage bill of the workforce and the civil service alone of Lagos was about 1.6 billion naira, that is excluding the tertiary institution, the Judiciary, capital expenditure, administrative charges and all of that. Then the man put on his thinking cap, and he started crafting what we call social engineering, and by that time we were in the executive council and he brought out a memo into the EXCO for us to discuss about how to make sure Lagos was put on a path of financial recovery and eventual path of financial independence, we argued for weeks on end on that policy and he insisted that was the way to go, and we started implementing the mechanism he had put in place.
I remember vividly at a point in 2005, after we had started implementing those policies and putting the mechanism in place, the IGR started climbing, and at a point in the executive council in 2004 or 2005, he did say quite unequivocally that, “if we went on implementing those policies at that pace we were going, that the administration or the successive administration that would take over from us will start swimming in money”, and he became prophetic. Today, you know the IGR of Lagos State, where it hovers.
There is no state in Nigeria that is close to what Lagos State generates, that is what we call visioning, He is a man with vision and he’s got the knowledge, and he’s got the will/the courage to push through those goals.
I remember there was a particular incident where he demonstrated the knowledge; we wanted to embark on radical and massive infrastructural development and renewal of the urban centres of Lagos, that was when we proposed the dualisation of Yaba to Itire/Lawanson, the Awolowo road you see today, was only two lanes, we dualised it without demolishing a single structure on Awolowo road, that was close to 20 years ago, till today, you don’t see a single porthole on Awolowo road. Then we embarked on Adeola Odeku, then Akin Adesola and a host of others that we did, but there was no money. Then he said we should go and take short term loan and hedge against inflation, because the way he saw things, if we didn’t take the short term loans while looking at the horizon, the financial health of Nigeria and the situation, inflation was going to rise, we would not be able to afford the materials again, but that it was better for us to hedge, take short term loans, buy all the iron rod necessary, the cement, the materials, for all those constructions, so that by the time the inflation climbed higher, we would have amassed all the materials necessary for it. We argued and argued, those of us who are not financial experts, we argued against it, even those that were finance people in the EXCOs, then Wale Edun was commissioner for finance, Yemi Cardoso was commissioner for budget and planning. We confronted Tinubu on it in the executive council, and he maintained his stand, at some point, some of us kept quiet, it was left to Wale Edun, the commissioner of finance, who also was on our side, he took on the governor, he was wearing suit, when the argument ensued and persisted, at some point he took off his jacket. Wale removed his jacket and the argument went on, then he loosened his tie and the argument went on, then he rolled up his sleeves. I remembered Mrs. Kemi Nelson was also in the cabinet then, Mrs. Kemi said; “Wale, at this rate, you would remove your shirt”, and we all laughed in the EXCO. That was how hot our executive council deliberation was, because when you have a suffix of technocrats and professionals, and you are also deep yourself, our executive council meetings were always like editorial conferences, contentious, you bring a memo, everybody would draw out their knives, and punch holes in your memos, so you must have done your homework before you brought memo to the executive council, and defend. Everybody would bring ideas, it was an intellectually robust session that we had, and so at the end of the day, issues were exhaustively discussed, and conclusions were logically reached, and from there policies were conceptualized, formulated, executed, tracked and monitored, so the resultant effect is what you have in Lagos today, and that is why Lagos would keep moving ahead. So those who are mouthing one-man rule, one man rule, they are probably quite ignorant or mentally vacuous.
