Public officers abdicate responsibility with use of siren – Fashola

• Says ‘If any of my commissioners use siren, he loses his job’

Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola, is passionate about the new Lagos Traffic Law, which he believes aims at preserving lives. In this interview with journalists, he shares his thought on the traffic law, state police, adoption of anthem, coat of arms and flag by some state governments, among other issues. AYODELE OJO, who covered the session, reports

Recently, there was a report by The Economist which ranked Lagos as the third worst city to live in the world. What do you make of the rating?For me, criticisms don’t offend me; they challenge me to do more. So, I decided to find out what this ranking was all about. What I observed was that about 140 cities, cities not countries, were ranked across the whole world. For me, there is a plus there. Australia had about six, Canada had about seven, only London was ranked in Britain, so they didn’t rank Manchester. In West Africa, I cannot recollect that Accra made that ranking. Only Lagos was ranked out of the 36 states in Nigeria. If you enter a global ranking of 140 cities across the world, for me, that is a plus. We may be at the tail of the ranking, our challenge now is to begin to climb to the top of the ranking.

We are too important in the comity of nations to be neglected. That is the fact – our market, our size, our entrepreneurship and exposure. By size we are bigger than 13 African countries as a state. By Gross Domestic Product (GDP), we are bigger than more than 40 countries. Our GDP for 2010 was $80 billion.

My concern is that if we have built more roads, hospitals and put in place more infrastructure, what kind of ranking would have made Lagos remain on the same spot for three years. The two rankings before that of 2009 was the same. So, I asked what are the ranking indices. If we are spending money every year and we didn’t pass, we didn’t fail, then something must be wrong.

For me, we are a work in progress and I think that maybe unlike the events across the Atlantic where some people asked their opponents, whether they were better four years ago, I think I can say, that we are very much better off than we were five years ago. And I don’t say that alone, many Lagosians will tell you that, but our work is not yet finished.

There have been allegations that the Eko Atlantic City project is responsible for the recent ocean surge in Lagos. How true is this?
There is the reality of climate change. Our planet is changing and you know it. Eko Atlantic City clearly was not the cause of what happened in Kuramo neither is it the cause of what happened in Alpha beach. The Eko Atlantic City project area today is what we all know as the Bar Beach. But the problem of erosion there started when the Europeans built the Apapa port. That was what caused the problem. For you to build a port, you must create deep water. The vessels that come from the Atlantic Ocean are channelled into that deep water. In doing so, they built two moles, so there was an intervention to nature. Normally, the sea brings sand and takes sand away. If you build a mole, you interrupt that natural flow, so the beach started taking away more sand than it was depositing. The Europeans built an automated mechanised replenishment system, but when they left, we abandoned it and then the erosion continued without control.

Before now, if you were going to the beach, the place where that road is now was the beginning of your journey to see water; you would have to travel another two kilometres to see water, but that is what we have lost. If you superimpose that against the map of Nigeria, clearly our boundaries have been altered in physical terms. The sand replenishment that is going on now is a restoration of what used to be there. So, we are only bringing back what had been lost.

What the Federal Government had been doing in the last 10 years was pumping sand of about N3 billion per year and the sea just take it away. So, if you calculate N3 or N4 billion over 10 year, it is enough to build a defence.

There seems not to be a uniform position of state governors and stakeholders on establishment of state police. There are fears that the governors will manipulate the process to their own advantage. Do you still support the idea?
The first responsibility we have is to secure the people and property. We are here with the responsibility of policing many of you. The model is that if you allow the state to have more control on the police, things will be better.

The week that I resumed office as governor, I spent every night of the first week either in the outpatient ward because somebody has been shot or in the mortuary because somebody has been killed or visiting homes where elderly citizens had been attacked or robbed. And of course, there seems to be a total lack of capacity. There was no day, every week at least, a bank would be robbed successfully and we were helpless. All of that are now bygones. Attempts are being made to rob banks now, but none has been successful because we can respond.

Yes, there have been arguments, but those arguments do not address the issue. The argument that it would be used for election; excuse me, only the living will participate in an election. The first responsibility is to keep them alive. Because we have not organised elections properly, that is why we believe the police would be used to manipulate elections. If we are able to organise election properly, I don’t see any reason why businesses will be shut down because we are conducting elections.

So, all of these arguments tend to perpetuate our imperfections. You have a constitution that creates states and federal governments, creates states and federal legislative houses, creates states and federal courts to adjudicate on laws made by different levels of legislative houses, and it says you can’t have state police. And the argument of fear of abuse is the only argument that they can bring. I am sure that if you genuinely ask Nigerians today to choose between the fear of abuse and the fear of losing their loved ones, they will tell you that the fear of losing their lov

ed ones ranks higher in their consideration. Indeed, is there any police force in the whole world that does not abuse itself or abuse its citizens? You see in the biggest democracy where police beat citizens to the point of death; where police open fire with live bullets on the citizens. Now, you say don’t give them state police because they will abuse it. Are we not abusing vehicles? Are we driving the way we should drive? So, why don’t we put it into the law, ‘don’t give them vehicles because they will drive recklessly,’ we need to do what is right.

One major trend recently is the adoption of flags, crests and anthem by some state governments. Do you think this is appropriate at this material time when insecurity is of concern?All these speak to the essence of our national development. We are a diverse people. Every state wants to be identified. Why does the mastheads of newspapers differ? In Lagos, we don’t have a coat of arms, we have a seal for the government of Lagos and it tells all about us – our culture, our enterprise, our business, our coast. And those are the things you will see. The cowries depicting very clearly our commercial capacity, the wheels showing our industrialisation, the blue sea showing that we are a rich coastal state and the green showing our vegetation, while the crown sitting on the crest talks about our traditional institution.

Two weeks ago, when we hosted the Federation Cup final, Lobi Stars and Heartland brought their flags. And you are saying governments cannot have flags; clubs have flags, schools have flags, and banks have flags! Excuse me!

In terms of timing, it speaks to the compelling need for us to sit down and renegotiate the terms of this family and commonwealth. It speaks to the current need for a true federalism. That is why it is happening now.

The new Lagos Traffic Law is generating controversy in the state.It is not only traffic that is our problem; there are some unsavoury problems that are not compatible with urban life. You see on our highways now, people just come and hang clothes as if it was a laundry. They speak to very serious issues and challenges of urbanisation that we are facing. If you are coming from a less urbanised area where there are no proper roads, so you can drive in the village square, but you can’t do that in Lagos. There is a pattern we drive here.

This is not the first traffic law. I saw a photograph of traffic on Carter Bridge in 1966, bumper to bumper. So, this problem has been there for a long time. But why did we act? At that time people were not driving against traffic, but it was organised and that was the time go slow started.

It is the same traffic that you see in Lagos that you see in Johannesburg in the morning and evening. The same thing you will see in London in the morning and in the evening, you will see it in New York in the morning and in the evening, you will see it in San Francisco in the morning and in the evening. It is called rush hour traffic. The mayor of New York is imposing a congestion charge and they fought him everywhere. London has congestion charge. Why don’t we have congestion charge? We can’t have congestion charge because there is no congestion. But we seem to be so defensive and sorry for ourselves and taken the victim approach and the people who have congestion have the temerity to come and tell us that traffic is bad and we accept it?

I don’t take taxi in New York; I walk because it is quicker to walk than to drive. They have that congestion in spite of an efficient rail system, an efficient water transportation system. It speaks to an inherently superior managerial capacity here than there.

Let’s stop feeling sorry for ourselves. There is an image I can present to you, the day the traffic lights in New York shut down, they had no clue. New York was at a standstill for about eight hours and these men and women of LATSMA everyday push this traffic without the aid of technology and instead of encouraging them, we sweep them with the same brush. I will like to take them off the streets for one day in order to explain to us in very practical terms what they do. I wish I could!

Let us name and shame the bad ones. But let us protect those who take their duty with dignity trying to keep traffic in Lagos.

Yes, people have genuinely expressed concern about awareness, signage. They are concerns but those are easy to resolve and that is why before the law came to force on August 2, we have been slow to enforce but very quick to pursue awareness. In the last two weeks we have installed an additional 2,000 road signs across Lagos, showing that we mean well. This is what defines our maturity and our civilisation: transportation. It is what defines ultimately at how much we buy things. If we get it right all of us will be better for it.

Recently, we lost four university lecturers in a country that does not have enough. They were avoiding a head on collision and the only way they could go was water. If you go and investigate it, you will see that there was a loss of concentration and that is why a head on collision became imminent. Somebody took his eyes off the road, either he slept off or was distracted. When these accidents happen, irreversible changes follow. From the day that accident happened, we have widows and widowers, you can’t change it anymore. For one second, you will cause an irreversible change in your life. Even if some of them survived, life will not be the same again. For one second, what do you want? You want to smoke? You want to drink? You want to give your baby breast milk? Those are some of the things we see.

You know what? Accidents don’t discriminate. It may be you, it may be me. There is nothing wrong with us; we just need to change the way we do things. In all that traffic you see abroad, you don’t see okada running against traffic!

Some people even say the law is to generate revenue for the state, I don’t see our prosperity in cash, I see our prosperity as a state in the quality of life of the people we have. That is my balance sheet. The quality of life of the people I serve.

How about the use of siren? Now, add to the stress of okada and Keke Marwa (tricycle), is siren. What should be used only for emergency we now put it on every day. And I have been asking this question and nobody has been able to answer it: are we in a perpetual emergency?

I have insisted that no matter the temptation to use siren, I don’t intend to use it until I leave office. I have been in very bad traffic, we have never put on the siren in my car and it is an absolute rule for my commissioners. We have resolved that you will leave the job the day I find out. It doesn’t make sense. We are entrusted with the responsibility to manage traffic, people contribute their taxes to us to go and make the road better for them, we now take that money to buy siren and we escape and leave them behind in the traffic. We have abdicated our duty. So, if the traffic is bad, come down and go and fix it or stay in there with the people.

I don’t know why people are opposed or critical of moves to save their lives? Do we want to continue in that bad way? All the things that we said were not possible in Nigeria have happened because we have refused to change.

When Idi Amin was reigning in Uganda, we said no such thing could happen here, but we saw worse. When the currency of Ghana devalued significantly, we said it can’t happen in Nigeria, it has happened. I can begin to count all the things that we said could not happen and they have happened.

What has been the state of governance in your second term in office?
What I have come to understand on this job is really that this is a job that never finishes. It is true that there are places where we have nothing doing and we are elsewhere for longer than we should be. But as I have argued before, if all the work could be finished, maybe Alhaji Lateef Jakande or Asiwaju Bola Tinubu would have finished it before I came. So, it is an on-going process.

But we have sought to act methodically, where the problem is most intense. Given the limited nature of our resources, where can we make the biggest impact with those limited resources? For example, in my first term, we focused on the high traffic roads like Funsho Williams, Murtala Muhammed Way, Okota Link bridge, Lekki Expressway and so on and so forth. We started Badagry expressway. We freed up those roads because those were the roads that carried the biggest traffic. I ventured to think what could have happened today if we had gone to the inner roads first. I am sure that the complaint would have been that ‘we can’t get to work’, ‘our children cannot get to school’.

So, in our second term, we are focusing on the inner roads and that is what we are addressing now. From Ogudu to Badagry, Itire to Aguda, to Ajegunle, to Agiliti, Lamgbasa, Ilubinrin. These are some places where some of you have never been, but I have been there. So, every time they make this elitist argument, I trust that the people in those areas would say ‘we are being served.’

Sometimes a decision as to what to do in a community is made more difficult by community issues. You may just find a particular group there of either a particular ethnic extraction or by some accident, a religious colouration and it becomes a potential keg of gunpowder that needs to be properly handled so that you don’t lose your objective.

For instance, there was a complaint from a church that a commissioner has hatred for them simply because there is need to remove a church that was built on the drainage. We are trying for example to do a refuse recycling and sorting facility inside a waste dump and somebody has gone to build inside the refuse dump and in addition to that, he has taken us to court! How do we handle that? We negotiated until we had to pay a settlement because when I looked at the time, four years to get out of court, but those are not things we will come and celebrate here.

We were trying to do a stadium in Ifako Ijaye, a community centre, because we see the traffic of people trying to come to Campos Square from there. The day we moved there, it was a court action and we had to settle.

And we know that some people are benefiting from this resettlement hype. They get grants in the name of those people which never get to them. I have gotten some allegations now that we have displaced some millions of people from Makoko, ‘I said give me the number, I will resettle those millions if you can produce them.’