Special Inaugural Edition

governor
the
SPECIAL INAUGURAL EDITION
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.
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