Speeches

Nigerian Student Society, University Of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland

Mar 10, 2011 - I wish to thank the University of Strathclyde Nigerian Students Society, especially the President of the Society, Fred Obiora Iwobi and Ibrahim Disu, the Vice President who signed the letter inviting me to speak at your Conference on the topic "WHICH WAY NIGERIA?".

By this invitation, you honour my party, the Action Congress of Nigeria, the public servants, and the Government and people of Lagos State, and I thank you on their behalf.

Your letter of invitation invites me to "…give some practical recipes for good leadership and followership…"

Let me at the onset say that I profess no special knowledge about the subject of leadership. Furthermore, I am aware that many great thinkers and scholars have written many useful books about leadership and there is perhaps very little I can add to those very well researched books.

As far as our country Nigeria is concerned, I am certain that all is not lost. Her future lies in our hands to determine and order as we choose.

It is for me, a matter of the attitude we develop in ourselves and the relationship we choose to have with Nigeria.

In my view all the ingredients for a prosperous life exist in our country. She is, as you know, vastly endowed in natural resources, land, forest reserves, oil, gas, cocoa, gold, bitumen, water reserves, coal and so much more.

Unlike many other countries with a dearth of people, she has a healthy supply of human resources in about 150 million people, who I believe represent her greatest resource.

At this period when many nations are battling with the problem of an aging population, the quality of Nigeria's human resource is perhaps one of the best in the world.

It is estimated that about 70% of her 150 million people are below 40 years old.

This is the quality of youthfulness, energy and enterprise that every nation requires, to put her resources to work and to propel her economy to prosperity and her people to greatness.

I am certain that you may then be wondering first, how this will happen and secondly, why we seem to hear only about problems and not successes.

Let me start by attempting to answer the latter question.

The truth is that some successes are already being recorded, but many a people have been overwhelmed by living with the problems such that their despair has turned to cynism that blurs their capacity to appreciate that some progress is being made.

I understand this attitude, but I do not succumb to it. My commitment as Governor of one of the 36 States is to use the privilege and authority of my office to build and restore hope, that nothing is impossible, starting from Lagos.

As for the former question about how that change will happen, perhaps the answer lies in explaining to you my own approach so that you can determine for yourself how you wish to approach your country.

As you might be aware, I will be 48 years old this year. I lived through two distinct periods of Nigeria's history. The early 1960s and 1970s which were the periods of our greatest prosperity, and 1980s through the 1990s which were the politically tumultuous periods and era of mass Nigerian emigration from home.

During the former period, our education system was reliable because I was trained in Nigeria, from primary education through to University. I have never studied outside Nigeria.

I experienced regular supply of fuel and a relatively stable electricity supply. I experienced a burgeoning and reliable transport system. I remember the bus 88 (eighty eight) run by the Lagos Municipal Transport Service that took us home from Yaba to Surulere and ran a regular 30 minutes shift.

I also saw how these services collapsed as we engaged in two decades of political struggle, starting from the 1980s through to the 1990s, that consumed the entire leadership of our country and diverted our attention away from the developmental issues that are the primary purpose of governance.

I saw our population grow without commensurate investment in increased school development, increased water supply or increased hospital development, and other necessary infrastructure required to sustain a growing population.

I saw our national currency lose its value against other international currencies, as we depended on more importation without concentrating on self sufficiency in any area. We imported more vehicles without building new roads. We imported more electrical appliances without investing in increment in the production of electricity.

Dear students, distinguished audience, this was my understanding of what went wrong.

Whilst political scientists and economists may understand and analyse it differently or even better, I have concluded that the problem was self inflicted. I have also resolved that it is not impossible to rectify it.

If we have experienced good education before, if we have experienced a good transport service before, if we have had a reliable healthcare service before, it was in my view, not beyond us to recreate it again.

I resolved that it was pointless to attempt to reinvent the wheel. We simply had to go back to the basics and commit ourselves to hard and uncompromising work and endeavor to recreate the past in a way that makes the present comforting and restores hope for the future.

The fortuitous events that got me appointed into the public service in the Government of Lagos as Chief of State in 2002, which led to a most providential election in 2007 that brought me to the office of the Governor of Lagos in 2007 was the opportunity to attempt to demonstrate my beliefs that all was not lost, using the achievements of my predecessor as a most reliable launching pad to consolidate on the foundations that had been laid.

Between 2007 and now, the people of Lagos have rallied behind our Government, to transform a State that was once regarded as a "concrete jungle" into many green parks and open spaces that are not only health and environmental assets, but which are also providing recreational opportunities for young people.

We used to be known as one of the dirtiest cities, but we have not only turned the challenges of waste management into employment opportunities, we have been acknowledged in 2009 as the cleanest State in Nigeria and many other States are coming to understudy our waste management model.

One of our thousand of street sweepers, Jojolewa, who had lost her home, before she got a street sweeping franchise from our Government has recently moved into her own 2 (two) bedroom flat, apart from the fact that she now employs over 100 people to operate her franchise.

Our Bus Rapid Transit System (BRT) has grown from zero, to over a thousand buses, owned by the road transport unions who used to operate the rickety yellow buses, and now employs over 1,200 (One thousand, two hundred) bus operators, many of whom are graduates who used to do the same work overseas.

Our waste managers have acquired over 4,000 (Four Thousand) compactors trucks and are still buying more and employing people to operate them.

Our response capacity for medical, traffic, fire, crime and other emergencies is the fastest and most efficient in the country and amongst other West African states, as it is now supported by a 3 (three) digit toll-free help line number 767 or 112, that citizens can call in times of distress.

Our security model, the Lagos State Security Trust Fund, which has reduced armed robberies by over 80%; reduced murders by over 75% and achieved an 85% stolen vehicle recovery capacity, has become a national model for other states.

Since its inauguration in 2008 there has been no successful bank robbery in Lagos although we had one attempt in 2010 and another early this year. This must be contrasted against the situation before 2008, where bank robberies were successfully carried out without a capacity for response by security agencies on a monthly basis.

We have transformed Oshodi from an impassable human conundrum into an orderly arena of human and vehicle activity where travel time has reduced from about 3 hours to about 40 minutes.

We have started the construction of the Lagos Light Rail project almost 30 (Thirty) years after the Lagos Metroline was cancelled, and hope for a replacement was diminishing.

We have constructed 147 new roads and about another 104 are in various stages of construction to ease traffic, while our road maintenance capacity is daily increasing under the management of a Nigerian who chose to relocate to Nigeria from the diaspora to join the rebuilding process.

We have built over 5,000 new classrooms, by which we are reducing overcrowding in public schools and we have added 700 new hospital bed spaces through the completion of 7 (seven) out of 8 (eight) 100 bed special hospitals for women and children.

We are almost completing our Cardiac and Renal specialist centres that will reduce the number of our people who have to go overseas for treatment of cardiac or renal afflictions.

We have completed 13 (Thirteen) out of 15 (Fifteen) 2 (Two) Million Gallons per day mini-water works as the short term solution to our water supply deficit, to add 30 Million Gallons of water per day to the water supply in our State; and we have commenced the implementation of the medium term plan to build 4 (four) new waterworks at Adiyan, Ishasi, Odomola and Ota-Ikosi that will provide a combined supply of 300 (Three Hundred) million gallons of water per day over the next 4 (four) years.

Dear students, I do not by enumerating what we have done in almost 4 (Four) years suggest that we have solved all the problems. I believe that our work is just beginning, because there is so much to do.

I use these only as examples of our resolve to explode myths that have held our minds captive that certain things cannot be done by our people.

I use them as examples of the kind of attitude I wish to urge upon you. I use them as examples only of the kind of belief that you must hold, that nothing, except yourself can stop you from succeeding if you dare.

This is the kind of attitude that your country requires of you.

I use them also as practical demonstrations of the very obvious fact that nothing will change in Nigeria as long as we continue to complain about it and do nothing to effect change.

I use them as examples of our resolve to change the much we can and to inspire you to join us in propelling the change further.

Before I conclude, permit me to attempt to locate what I consider our most important challenge.

I referred to it in the opening part of my address when I spoke of attitude.

I believe that what we have to re-build or develop in our country is as much her physical infrastructure and our own mental infrastructure.

I believe the latter is a lot more important and will be the most enduring.

By this mental infrastructure, I refer to our values. It is those values that we must urgently renew as the foundation upon which we will build the Nigeria that we dream about.

Those values must be values of hard work, honesty and integrity. They are the values by which we must all resolve to subject ourselves to the laws of our land without discrimination.

They are the values by which we must resolve to punish offenders no matter how highly placed and to rehabilitate them thereafter; but never to celebrate them, unless they have fully reformed and contribute to our national development in a transformational way.

These values will earn us local and international respect. It will earn us reliable friendship and partnerships that will look upon us in a way that is certainly much better than what we have today.

When I spoke of the periods of 1960s and 1970s, those values were existent in abundance.

As children, it was not conceivable that we would borrow a pencil or magazine from a classmate and forget to give it back, whether conveniently or accidently.

Our parents ensured that things that did not belong to us never stayed the day talk less of a night in our home. We were compelled to return them with a decent dose of punishment to ensure that it never happened again.

We were encouraged to join clubs and societies like the Boys' Scout, Girls Guides, Red Cross, Boys' Brigade and so on, to learn the values of service, team work and leadership. That is why our Government has resuscitated those Clubs in all public schools in Lagos State today.

I have no doubt in my mind that with proper values a positive turn around will be an achievable milestone.

If there are some people who tell you that it is not possible to turn things around for the better, tell them that they forget the lessons of history and that it is already happening in Lagos and some other States.

In the way that we have seen many prosperous nations and cities collapse from prosperity, ancient Rome and Detroit, the home of the automobile industry in the USA are examples; we are witnesses to the renaissance of cities like New York, Dubai, and countries like Ghana, Brazil and China to mention but a few.

If they tell you that we are too big, please tell them that China is bigger than us and so is the United States of America.

If they tell you that we are too heterogeneous and have too many ethnic nationalities and languages, tell them that Israel transformed today from what Mark Twain described as a "desolate country" 6 (Six) decades ago into "…one of the most dynamic entrepreneurial economies in the world".

Israel did so, with a "…population made up of some seventy different nationalities. A Jewish refugee free from Iraq and one from Poland or Ethiopia did not share a language, education, culture or history"

They started out as "…a community of penniless refugees…" that "brought back with it the culture, language, and customs of the four corners of the earth".

Adversity, necessity and innovation were the ingredients that propelled them forward.

As a nation, we have experienced the adversity, the necessity to act is now most compelling. We must develop the right values, and pursue innovation relentlessly.

Therefore, dear students, in answer to the question in your letter of invitation "Which Way Nigeria?" I say, it may seem like we have a long way to go but we would be better off if we are on the way there.

When the powerful forces of imagination and innovation are released in the minds of the youth, it would take us all towards a life beyond our expectation and experience.

This generation has been saddled by history with the responsibility to lead Nigeria to a new age. The youth can help build a society where the demands of morality and the needs of the spirit can be realized in the life of the nation.

The government is not oblivious to these challenges that plague our nation and while they are various programs directed at these issues, I do not pretend that we have the answers to all the problems. I can however say that we would give it our best as well as engage and employ the best to find the answers Nigeria needs.

There are those who believe Nigeria is doomed and the spell can never be broken, I choose to differ. I believe we have the power to create the society we desire.

To birth out 'new Nigeria' all hands have to be on deck, the will, labor and commitment of the people, in no small measure the youth.

I quote Woodrow Wilson when I say that, 'Every man sent out from his university should be a man of his Nation as well as a man of his time.'

I have come to your campus today to let you know that you can make this vision a reality. We can if we begin the work. The future will come into being if we properly prepare for it in the present. It is then we can say that we have turned our resources over to enrich our lives fully.

At this point, it is perhaps apt to remind ourselves of the second stanza of Nigeria's national anthem:

"O God of creation,
Direct our noble cause;
Guide our Leaders right:
Help our Youth the truth to know,
In love and honesty to grow,
And living just and true,
Great lofty heights attain,
To build a nation where peace and justice shall reign."

I strongly believe in this and will spend the rest of my life, in and out of political office, to make this a reality.

Thank you for your attention, and May God bless Nigeria

Eko o ni baje!

Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN
Governor of Lagos State