Sanwo-Olu would be leaving Lagos far better than he met it. He gave Lagos a torch, a tone and a tune. A torch of brilliant colours.
On this day, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the governor of Lagos, has done seven years, three months and 8 days on the beat as governor of Nigeria’s most cosmopolitan, most commercialised and most welcoming state. That is 2,657 days, 379 weeks or 87 months. A good 7 years and three months with barely nine months to go. And should he sign out today, Sanwo-Olu who asked to be addressed as Mr. Governor, and not ‘His Excellency’, the most abused prefix among politicians in Nigeria these days, would be walking tall, head high, and shoulders raised.
Reason is simple. Sanwo-Olu would be leaving Lagos far better than he met it. He gave Lagos a torch, a tone and a tune. A torch of brilliant colours. A tone of gemstone glow. A tune of harmonious symphony. Sanwo-Olu advanced development in Lagos in a manner that the late Lateef Jakande would be proud of. Jakande was the first civilian governor of Lagos state (1979-1983) who laid the foundation for the brick-by-brick transformation of the state. Jakande as governor never travelled out of Nigeria. He was too committed to building Lagos. His work ethic was peerless. Humble and simple, his Illupeju home was his permanent address. He did not build a gigantic mansion for himself as Nigeria’s neo-bourgeois governors do. He had a grand vision for Lagos in the areas of transportation, education, housing, healthcare and general infrastructure.
A good 43 years after Jakande left office, his development touchstones and legacies still dot the Lagos landscape. Jakande schools, including Lagos State University (LASU), housing projects (Jakande estates), Jakande hospitals and primary health centres; roads and other infrastructure are still in use. He had a grand vision for rail transport in Lagos. It was on this foundation that the current President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, built on as governor of Lagos from 1999 to 2007.
It seems all too convenient to say that Sanwo-Olu is following the template of the great Jakande. Sanwo-Olu, by the way, is a protégé of the Tinubu school of politics and governance. It was easy to adapt to and adopt the existing governance and development template. And in seven years, he has proven to be a worthy student of development. I have lived in Lagos for decades and I am yet to see any state in Nigeria develop, urbanise and modernise like Lagos. This has nothing to do with Lagos being a former capital of Nigeria. Otherwise, why has Calabar, former capital of Oil Rivers Protectorate and later Southern Nigeria Protectorate not transitioned to a modern city? Why has Lokoja, a former capital of Northern Nigeria Protectorate remained behind time and modernity? Or Asaba, a notable Administrative centre and a significant epicentre of the Royal Niger Company’s (RNC) commercial activities in the colonial era? Asaba, current capital of Delta State, has remained a sleepy, low industry patch of earth, just crawling out of its old, rustic morphology.
Here, we dimension this discourse to Lagos of 1999 to 2026. The 4th Republic Lagos. Development has been fast, radical and bullish. Faster than development in any part of Nigeria, except Abuja. No debate now. No politics. Lagos is working. In this 4th Republic, Lagos has undergone and is still undergoing urbanisation at a speed never before experienced. Tinubu students from Babatunde Fashola, Akinwunmi Ambode and now Sanwo-Olu, have continued to raise the bar in governance, matching campaign slogans with real, measurable development.
It is a political leadership transition that deserves to be studied. Even when they politically disagree, the Tinubu students do not disagree on development. They stay focused on the Marshall Plan. Immersed in the demands of their mandate. The one inherits a project from his predecessor and goes ahead to complete it. No abandoned project; no needless strife. Just purpose-driven intentional leadership to serve the people. It is not for nothing that every governor of Lagos gets high praise.
What has worked for Lagos is the manifest leadership stability. By consensus or otherwise, you will always know who will succeed who as governor. While other states fight and brawl, sometimes in bloodbath, over the emergence of a governor, the Lagos political machinery simply picks its candidate. This is not weakness or anti-democratic as some persons interpret it. This is actually democracy in full plume. Consensus is part of party politics, recognised by the canons of political parties and respected by courts of the land, including the Supreme Court. Internal affair of a political party is the responsibility of that party; not critics of the party, bystanders or even the courts. Anybody outside that party is a meddlesome interloper. By now, Lagosians know that Dr. Kadri Obafemi Hamzat, the current deputy governor of Lagos, will succeed Sanwo-Olu. The Tinubu school and think-tank have chosen him as the next man for the job. And guess what? He will follow the development script. The UK-trained systems cum process engineer will not disconnect the loop.
Back to Sanwo-Olu. Has anybody done an audit of what was in 2019 and what is now in Lagos? Ambode was fantastic, signing off with the total reconstruction of a federal road, the Murtala Muhammed International Airport Road, turning what President Obasanjo and his successors neglected into a 21st century route befitting an international airport. This did not faze Sanwo-Olu. He simply raised the bar of development. His imprints in rail transportation (Lagos Blue Rail, Red Line Rail), road transport especially modernisation of the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) operations; education, housing, healthcare (his response and management of the Covid-19 pandemic in Lagos still remains a pitch in global public health emergency containment), human capital development, social welfare, security, efforts at achieving food security with partnerships with other states and the private sector and overall grooming of the state economy, turning Lagos into the second (next to Cairo) largest city economy in Africa. And were Lagos a country, its economy will rank as the 8th largest in Africa. Such has been the magic of Lagos, a city that grew extra wings in the 4th Republic under the far-seeing, visionary compass of Tinubu and his students.
So far, Sanwo-Olu has grown into a man. A leader who has demonstrated both cognitive and emotional intelligence. He understands the inevitable cosmopolis of Lagos. He intentionally connects with all the peoples, recognising their cultural diversities and harnessing them for the shared prosperity of all.
Lagos is working. It is that part of Nigeria that gives us a glimmer of hope that one day, the glitters and commercial buzz that define the global north will take root in Nigeria. On the job, Sanwo-Olu has penned his memoir in golden ink.
Nigerians from other states should ask their governors, past and present, what they did, or are doing, with the billions of naira they collect from Abuja every month plus whatever they generate internally. It’s called accountability. Never an offence to demand probity in a democracy.
In Lagos, even the most ardent political carpers and hired nitpickers are consensual on the passion, sense of duty and legacy of Sanwo-Olu. The ‘Lagos Boy’ is finishing strong. Besides, he has quietly groomed a worthy successor in his nearly 8 years of leadership bespangled with totems of development.
