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If you've had the opportunity to follow my campaign closely or you've taken time to read my manifesto, you would find that one of the issues that I address very strongly is the influence of 'vested-interests' in Lagos. Given that this is a legitimate concern for a lot of voters in the coming gubernatorial election in Lagos, I think it is important that I touch on it through this medium.
Let me preface this by saying that by the very nature of governance in itself, a leader is expected to understand how to juggle and meet the myriad of needs that present themselves across multiple interest points. And at the end of the day, the choices that one makes will have, more times than not, a strong correlation with what one truly believes - which is inherently summed up by ones personal values, ideology and experiences over time. However, a slightly deeper assessment of governance in Nigeria will reveal that the issue isn't so much about the enormous size of the individual and collective needs of the populace that one is elected to lead. In fact, on the contrary, one of the major challenges to governance is having to contend with the enormous appetite of a small group of people - typically elites - who decide that nobody else apart from themselves will have the opportunity to sit at the decision table as it concerns the affairs of the state. And that's what I classify as 'vested interests'. And quite frankly, it will have no place in my government.
For Lagos to truly become a mega-city, it must first and foremost be inclusive. It cannot be run like a private company. For a state blessed with so much human capital, we do the people a disservice when it is run like one. Government must begin to get out of the way of trying to own and be everything to everyone. At this junction in our development as a state, given the enormous challenges that we need to tackle from providing affordable healthcare, to building affordable homes, to creating jobs for our young people and revamping education to international standards, just to mention a few, it will only be retrogressive to have a government that wants to act as club owner, coach, referee and player - all in one match. We must begin create policies that foster independent initiatives and private enterprise and more importantly policies that ensure that governments processes and interventions become more transparent across the board so that there's no hiding place for 'vested interests'.
So how do we address this issue in concrete terms?
Well, one of the things that we've touched on in our BOLD IDEAS is that under my watch, government will become more open especially in the area of state-spending and the disbursement of funds. At the moment, the State's Tender Board does a good job capturing and reporting information about contracts and contracting, project completion periods and intermittent project monitoring and reporting. We want to take this up a notch to include budgeting, funds disbursement and real-time tracking of government spending to the last kobo. We intend to achieve this by working closely with the private sector to build a framework that would be enhanced via web technology so that Lagosians would be able to track in real-time how every Naira that the government earns is spent. Also, at the community level, we would empower the Local Government by transforming them from being just political outposts to economic enablers so that we ensure that the impact of government cascades down to the ordinary people.
The only way we beat the 'vested interests' is by being inclusive and opening up government to the people in a way that fosters private enterprise and ensures that government only plays the role of enabler and enforcer. Only then can we win a a people. So it is now up to us to decide what we want our government to be. You can be sure that under my leadership, no one person or group of people will have an overriding majority over the greater good of people of the state. I give you my word.
#LagosforYou
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