Aside the realignment of political forces on the Nigerian political terrain inherent in the defection of five governors from the ruling PDP into the nascent APC, two issues on the Lagos state style of governance engaged my attention and time this last week. The first was the way the state under its Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola is handling the issue of achieving its set goal of food security through the strategies and plans of its Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives. The second was the focussed determination of the Governor to keep traffic flowing in the Lagos Metropolis for the comfort of its citizenry. In stark terms and clear words the State Governor told a gathering of Lagos State Traffic Management Authority – LASTMA personnel, executives and stakeholders that if they have to choose between booking a traffic offender and obstructing the flow of traffic, they should let the offender go and let the Lagos traffic flow like water at all times.
Given the merger of APC and PDP mentioned earlier, an immediate media analysis of the political spread, strength and national power of the two major political parties in Nigeria has 18 states for the ruling PDP, 16 for the APC, one for APGA in Anambra and one for the Labor Party in Ondo State. If you do a mental arithmetic that the governors of Jigawa and Niger State did not append their signature to the APC merger because they would rather wait till the new year, together with the EFCC investigations or harassment of the Jigawa governor’s sons for money laundering, you may safely add two states to APC’S 16 to get 18. In addition, if you recall that Ondo’s Labor Party is closer to APC and is indeed in its catchment area, then you can give APC 19 states out of 36 nationwide. That is really over 50 per cent of the states in Nigeria and that is before the 2015 elections. Indeed the PDP scribe in reacting to the merger of the New PDP and APC seemed to be accepting defeat before the elections when he said that the defectors would come back to the party after the 2015 elections and the PDP would welcome them with open arms.Which means that the PDP has given up on its defectors while acknowledging their strength and its loss in electoral and voting prospects in these governors’ states.
However it is with regard to the Anambra State elections on which a supplementary election is slated for today that I want to make some observations. After this I will go back to how Lagos State is tackling agriculture and transportation with focussed innovation and commitment.
Almost all parties that took part in the Anambra State elections last Saturday admitted that it was and shoddily organised and that INEC officials performed below expectations in terms of availability of materials on time and on integrity. Post election, however Anambra State outgoing Governor Peter Obi, whose party APGA won the elections said that his government only prevented the other parties that wanted to rig from doing so and that if the elections were held ten times over APGA would still win. Which is not surprising given the fact that no less a person than the President of the Republic came to Anambra to campagn surprisingly not for the PDP but for the return of Obi’s APGA successor. The President even announced that he was not going to Commonwealth Heads of Governments Meeting – CHOGM – in Sri LANKA because of the Anambra state guber elections. Since this was after the President’s pilgrimage to Jerusalem during which he was very much in the company of the sole APGA governor in Nigeria, it is not difficult to guess why personal loyalty has taken pre eminence over party loyalty. This is because even as the PDP, the President’s party was announcing that it will take part in the supplementary elections today, its candidate at the elections who could not find his name and that of members of his family on the ballot last Saturday, was calling for fresh elections like the other parties that contested last Saturday’s Anambra state guber polls. Which shows that the Anambra state elections has just jump the usual and expected post election razzmatazz and rig marole peculiar to Nigeria’s elections. These invariably end up in legal gymnastics at the law courts where lawyers and judges determine who wins elections in a blantant usurpation of the rights of voters who in a free and fair election in a genuine democracy should choose the winner the ballot box as at last Saturday in Anambra State.
As elections in Anambra State were making a mockery of democracy in Nigeria, the two events I attended in Lagos State this week provided a silver lining in the cloudy horizon of Nigeria’s murky electoral politics, first in agriculture and secondly in transportation. An army, it was often famously said in ancient times, marches on its belly. In modern times however, so also do states, and nation -states, and no state in Nigeria knows and aims at achieving this more than the present BRF Administration through its Ministry of Agriculture under the leadership of its permanent Secretary Dr Bashorun.
I got a rare insight of the lagos State food security strategy when I attended a retreat organised by the Favorites Club of Lagos under its flamboyant president and the State Commissioner for Home Affairs, Prince Oyin Danmole in Badagry last weekend. The theme of the retreat was – ‘Social Clubs and Economic Empowerment‘. The State Ministry of Agriculture’s Permanent Secretary-PS-led a team of the Ministry’s Directors on a presemtation on Agriculture in Lagos State but it was the PS himself who was the high priest and
high pitch salesman of the State’s people oriented approach to agriculture. This strategy has the sole aim of making Lagos State feed its awesomely large population from within the state in all aspects of food availabilty, production and sufficiency. More importatntly the state is asking anyone who cares to come and have a stake in the ‘food basket’ project as investors because it knows it cannot go it alone. Which is like asking Lagosians to come and get wealth and prosperity on a platter of gold by investing in Agriculture with the state providing the infrastructure and helping out with the needed credit and facilities for potential investors and stake holders. To me that was unbelievable and almost un Nigerian but then, when we went to the Songhai farm project and I ate an harvested sweet corn, uncooked and so delicious, I knew something great was happening in Lagos state. When I saw Nigerian youths on training on the farm on the YES- Youth Empowerment Scheme – then I conceded that there is still hope for Nigeria in terms of meaningful economic planning and development, starting with the way Lagos State government is tackling food security pragmatically and heads on for positive, socio economic transformation of society and the environment in Lagos State.
The state’s transportation strategy has been no less proactive than that in agriculture. I was at a ceremony at which the state governor inducted volunteers from a certain social niche like social clubs and professional bodies as Special Traffic Mayors -STMs. More importantly the State government made sure that LASTMA personnel and officials were present at the ceremony. Before that day my opinion of Lastma and its officials was that of overzealous and crooked street and highway officials bent on ruinning the business land scape of Lagos through daily extortion of road users and business vehicles for one traffic violation or the other. Such bad eggs in LASTMA – including the one caught on video soliciting for bribe mentioned by the governor who said his dismissal was a fait accompli even though he was still on the run-will certainly sit up knowing that STWs are on the prowl and can identify them if they are involved in corrupt practices . The way the governor showed his commitment to flowing traffic left no one in doubt that he knows the importance of transportation to the growth of trade and commerce and political stability of Lagos state and the entire Nigerian nation.
It is necessary to look again at what Lagos state has done, from an historical and global perspective. In Egypt where the government is clamping down on protests on the streets and in the universities because it deposedthe elected government of President Mohammed Morsi, a government had been brought down before by food riots in Cairo and the major cities in Egypt. This was the regime of Anwar Sadat who brokered peace with Israel. Sadat himself was assassinated by a soldier who was a member of the Islamic Brotherhood which resurfaced recently to win Egypt’s first free elections in history. Before Sadat was assassinated his regime was unpopular because of the high prices of bread, the staple food of Egyptians.
Since Sadat was a dictator he repressed the food riots until an assassin caught up with him. That clearly illustrates the importance and relevance of food security to political stability in any political system.
Similarly in Brazil during the last FIFA organised Confederation Cup won by Brazil there were riots in many cities in that nation as the competition approached and during its duration. The protesters were agitating that even though they love soccer their standard of living did not reflect that of citizens of a nation hosting the Confederation Cup not to talk of the World Cup which Brazil is hosting next year and the Olympics which it is hosting in 2016. Which meant all the hard work Brazil’s former President Lula da Silva did to secure hosting rights for Brazil would have come to nought because the Brazilian government did not carry its people along while gunning for the highly prestigious sports
hosting rights for their pleasure while they suffer in the midst of plenty. Really what did the protesters ask for? They complained of long hours – about 4hours- in commuting to work daily to and fro, high food prices, poor infrastructure and high education costs. The Brazilian government has reacted favourably and has committed a certain percentage of its new oil revenues to education and infrastructure especially transportation. But really the Brazilian government not need to wait for street riots before looking after the welfare of its people by carrying them along government plans to entertain them as well as look after their welfare. May be the Brazilians need to borrow a leaf from the Lagos State book on agriculture and transportation that I narrated before Perhaps Lagos State can offer a helping hand to our Brazilian brothers especially as they and our Governor have a mutual love of the lovely game of soccer . That will certainly be a pleasure and yet another people and export- oriented approach following on the clear success in agriculture and transportation in Lagos State, here in Obodo Nigeria.
