Sanwo-Olu will complete all ongoing projects, says Information Commissioner, Omotoso

The Lagos State Governor, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu has given assurance to complete all ongoing projects before the administration comes to an end. In an interview with State House correspondents including Champion Newspapers’ Deputy News Editor, IBRAHIM QUADRI, the State Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Mr Gbenga Omotoso gives insight into the projection in place for Lagos residents. Excerpts:

The excitement on our side was the whole place coming alive, just like that. And all of a sudden, Lagos became the city that the whole globe was watching. We saw it on television, saw it on YouTube, and everywhere and the excitement was total, it was highly captivating. So for us, in Lagos, it’s something that we should be proud of. And that it’s, apart from the fact that it’s a boost to tourism, it’s also a plus to our economy. Because if we check the GDP of Lagos at the end of the year now, I’m sure that little period, about two, three weeks, that we’re planning to look, people coming in, especially the last week the race started, it’s going to have a very big addition to the GDP of Lagos. Talking about the hospitality sector, so many, many people, especially on the Island, were filled up with the people. And like you said, people who have never been to Nigeria before, coming for the first time, hearing so many things about Nigeria, and then coming to Nigeria to see the kind of thing that they saw, for them, it’s a very big excitement. And like one of them wrote to me, who was in the same committee with me, the media and publicity committee, he said they were already thinking of returning. And one of the owners of E1 told a colleague of mine that he knew that he was going to go to heaven one day but that he never knew that it was going to be this fast, and that heaven is in Lagos. Testimony cannot be better than that. So, I think for us, in terms of the economy, in terms of tourism, in terms of putting Lagos on the global stage, I think it was a very good show. And like you asked, it’s not only the one-off show, at least for the next five years, because I was asked permission to host the race. And I feel that what we have done, the kind of media publicity, they’ve never seen anything like this before. Like if you look at the whole thing on the social media, or in terms of media generally, the last race that they had in Monaco, in Europe, it was  nothing compared to the kind of attention they got in Lagos. Millions and millions of people trying to know what was going on. And we also saw the videos made by some of those participants. And it’s also about sustainability, about a clean energy about climate change and what humanity should be about. And for us, for Lagos to be at the table during that kind of conversation, I think it’s a very big plus for Lagos. So in whichever way you look at it from the tourism point of view, from the economy point of view, from the point of view of sports, from the point of view of culture, I think NIWA was a big deal. And Lagos really made it something that became important for the state. And I think that it’s something that’s likely to continue.

Recently, we had some stores, malls, shops and buildings demolished at the Trade Fair along the Lagos Badagry Expressway, the allegation or the claim is that the act by the Lagos state planning authority was a way to cow the Igbos in order to intimidate them, probably to support the party at the state level. What’s your reaction to that?

It’s absurd. It’s unthinkable because Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu has provided us with service for about six years. And in those six years, nobody has come up to complain that he has had anything to do with any segregation like that, discrimination like that, in terms of religion, in terms of  of racism. We all know those things that they are talking about, discrimination? There are things that people who don’t even know us are talking about, people who don’t even live in Lagos. Some of those things that you see on the social media, you go and check out all of those who are perpetrating that, they are people who don’t live here, who live millions and millions of miles away. And talking specifically about Trade Fair, how can you build a house without permit? It’s not done anywhere. And the government said, look, you can’t do this. It is owned by the federal government. That’s fine. What the law says, according to the Supreme Court judgment of 2003, Attorney General of Lagos versus Attorney General of the Federation, supported by other states who came into the matter, is that, well, only the states have the permission, the rights, the powers to issue permits for anybody to go and do it. And that is the way it’s done all over the world. If you go to New York, if you go to Los Angeles, if you go to Mumbai, if you go to Chicago, everywhere, you must obtain papers before you can do it. So I do not want to say people are ignorant. But honestly, there is so much to be desired that you can go and build skyscrapers and then you ask them for your papers, you don’t have any. And then that they can do anyhow the way they like and turn the whole place into a slum. Even in zoos, there is orderliness. The lions stay here, the leopards stay here, everything is orderly. So for me, all those people who are saying that it’s targeted at some ethnic groups, they don’t know what they are saying. I mean, they are just people who want to cause anarchy. They are just people who want to cause confusion among us and that is not the kind of thing that we desire or that we want.

For all big cities of the world, it’s not only in Lagos that such challenges exist. Especially in Lagos where people come in droves, in thousands, in their numbers every day and nobody is checking anybody. If you want to know what I’m saying, just stand by Berger Bridge, stay there for like 30 minutes you see trucks coming in, packing, mixing cows with the people; you see luxury buses coming in from some other places; moving in every day from morning till night. And when you have this kind of a situation, there’s so much pressure. There was generally about 20,000 tonnes or so of refuse per day. You know, moving all these things away from the streets requires a lot of work. LAWMA has new trucks for refuse, they have so many things and they are even moving from just packing the trucks and putting them in the dump sites, into turning the waste into wealth. Now, because of those things that you are seeing, I will insist, there are things that are caused by the people. Why would people pack refuse from their homes and then they just go and dump it on the road? Why is it that every home should not have a refuse bin where people can just put their refuse and then the PSP people will come around? In my area they come around once, twice a week to pack all these things. Many people are not ready to pay. That is why you are seeing the problem. Most people, they want some of these things free. We live in a society in which we are very particular about our rights, about our privileges, nobody wants to talk about responsibility at all. You ask them to pay little money for the PSP guys to come and you see that people will be complaining. I agree with you that we can do better in some areas, but all I know is that it is very important to note the human element as a factor. LAWMA people, they work round the clock. I’ve been out all day today, even yesterday. I went to so many places, I saw that the streets were very clean. But the way they pack those things and bring them to the road, in my opinion, is the kind of thing we should find a way of dealing with. We should stop it because it’s not done like that. We know the big cities of the world that we always refer to, that we see on television too. We need to change it. Why can’t you buy a very big waste bin and put everything in there? All the PSPs that you see, everyone has streets assigned to it and then they go there once a week, twice a week, to go and pack everything and I think it’s a very simple system. But because of the complexity of our people, it’s not working the way it should work. So we continue to push, we continue to try to see that we eliminate all those things so that people know that it’s not just a duty for the government to ensure that we have a very clean city but that the people themselves, the citizens, they must play their own part by ensuring that at the level of personal hygiene, we don’t dump refuse anyhow.

It goes back to the kind of thing that I spoke of earlier about the influx of people into communities, the influx of people into Lagos state. Because of the constitution, we cannot direct and then begin to ask people, where are you going to? The law does not permit us to do that kind of thing. So anybody can come into the Holy Ghost at any point in time. In fact, anyhow and when you have that kind of thing, there is no way you won’t have that kind of things. They don’t have any address, they don’t have any plan that they want to execute in Lagos. All they know is that Lagos is a land where we make money. It’s our own Canaland because the grass is greener in Lagos, that is why most of them are coming here and when they come here, I think with the reality of living in a big city, some of them then begin to misbehave. And I assure you, the law is taking care of such people. But the question is, like you asked, what’s the government doing about it? If you’re not doing anything, why don’t you go back to where you’re coming from? And the people say they don’t have transport fare. Okay, you give them money to go or you help them with vehicle to take them out and you see people shouting human rights.

Let me just start from the projects that you spoke of. One thing that I can assure you is that the administration of Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu won’t carry over the new projects. All the new projects that you have seen, that we have started, we are going to complete them. The New Massey Hospital is almost completed, what is left is what I can call equipping the hospital. It’s not just the building that makes the hospital, you must equip, that is where I feel that we really have a lot of work to do. But all I know is that by next year, that hospital will be commissioned. The Opebi-Mende link Bridge will be commissioned before the end of the year. Some of our food hubs, they are already being completed and they will be commissioned very soon. The one in Eti-Osa and some other ones, they are already completed. So the food and logistics hub, it’s the major one that we have now and it’s also going to be commissioned early next year, if not later this year, early next year. And it’s going to be the biggest in West Africa. And talking about the kind of excitement that we have about it, it’s the kind of hub that can store food because at least it can last for three months. And if there is so much inflation, prices are going up, we will release some of the items that we have because this is one that you can’t raise prices. So it’s a kind of facility that we are excited about. Also, the second phase of the Blue Line, that one is still going on there, and then another phase of the Red Line and of course, the Green Line, as I speak with you now, meeting is going on. I appreciate the progress, even if it’s not completed before we leave the office. So there is nothing that we are doing now that we are not going to complete. A week ago in Badagry, we have commissioned the Ajara housing project, that of Odo Onasa is also ready, Sangotedo is almost ready. So all of these projects, they are not projects that we can abandon. It’s not in the DNA of the APC administration to abandon projects. They are projects that we are very proud of and the government is going to complete them. Very soon we are going to commission a new school in Ajegunle, what I can call the biggest school anywhere in West Africa, one can describe as amazing.

It has to do with proper planning, and when the government goes into the place, people will also begin to sing the song of ethnicity, they will also begin to parrot the racism. Whereas disaster does not know any colour. Disaster does not know any ethnic group, disaster does not know any religion. If you don’t plan well and then disaster comes, it attacks everybody so if you have a place like that and then government comes in there to ensure that things are done properly. There are no cities anywhere in the world we go and see the kind of things that we are seeing in some of these places that you guys are mentioning. I think government was there about a month ago to do a kind of advocacy and to meet with the people and to tell them why they must move and where they are being taken to, I think the contractor that was working on it, was not moving fast enough and Mr Governor had directed that that contract should be terminated and given to another contractor who is doing very well now and then that is why we stepped on the advocacy to tell the people why they have to go to that place and to tell them that nobody is going to lose whatever he or she has in this market. So it’s just a question of a short time. The traders in Computer Village in Ikeja, we have to relocate them to another market at Katangowa in Abule-Egba.