Governing Lagos is not a child’s play — Sanwo-Olu

Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu featured in an interview on Sunday Politics Programme on Channels Television with Seun Okinbaloye. During the interview, he reflected on the demands of governing Lagos, Nigeria’s economic nerve centre with over 20 million residents.  Excerpts from his responses to issues of security, and infrastructure, governance, among other pressing needs, as well as the forthcoming gubernatorial election in the State, present below the burdens of governing a Mega city.

You had a meeting with some security chiefs in Lagos and you assured all Lagosians that all is well. With the recent security threats that have exposed not only Lagos but the nation, what are the proactive measures put in place to stop elements who want to infiltrate the state? 

Security is seen as the bedrock of any good governance because what we preach is that we want to ensure that we save the lives of the people, properties and life. These were some of the things that we campaign on. And if you look at my THEMES agenda, the last word there which is ‘S’ is Security and good governance. So, it is not something that we are just waking up to, it was something that we thought of and something we dreamt of and we knew we wanted to deal with. But to answer your question is to look at the security architecture in Lagos. I was opportuned to be the first interim chairman of the Lagos State Security Trust Fund (LSSTF) and I was part of the board for four years when we set up the fund in 2008.

So, what you see in Lagos outside of the regular Lagos State Police Command is that our government has been able to strengthen the Rapid Respond Squad (RRS). In fact, we have about 2,500 men that are in Rapid Respond Squad. We also have about 500 to 600 men in the Taskforce apart from the fact that we have access to about two to three MOPOL formations in Lagos. Lagos also has about 15 area commanders and about 110 divisional police officers. So what it means is that in that small space of 3,650 square kilometers you have this whole entire gamut of security architecture.

So what happens is that we have three layers of intervention in Lagos. The regular police in the event of a day-to-day issue that everybody wants to relate to, but when you have a tactical intervention, the men of the RRS are usually the ones that you see coming out first. And when it has to do with direct intervention from the Governor’s office, then you can also see the men of the Taskforce. So, in the last three years, we have also been supporting all the security architecture in the state – not only the Police. We have given them over 260 vehicles in the last three years. We have also extended similar things to other security architecture; the Nigerian Army, Nigerian Navy and Nigerian Air Force under a programme called OP MESA. So, with all of that, they continue to speak to each other on a panel of state security and we continue to also support them on equipment because we know security is not cheap.

It is not something we are starting today, it was something that we started right from day one, ensuring that we are not waiting for anybody to do what we need to do in Lagos to make sure that they are motivated, they have the equipment to work with, they have logistics support and they have access to me. That is what has helped us pretty much to be able to speak to the issue and deal with it when they do occur in the terms of its architecture.

What we have also now done is coming out of the regular police formation, to also extend this same security architecture to other security agencies in Lagos State; NDLEA (National Drug Law Enforcement Agency), Civil defense corps, Correctional center, Nigerian Immigration Service and of course the Neighborhood Watch that we also have. So, it is the entire tripod that is now activated; ‘see something, say something’ – that is now activated at various security operations to know that everybody has a box to take; everybody has a responsibility to ensure that whatever you need, notice or observe in your own sphere of engagement, escalate it, have access to the people that can come and rescue the situation. So, those are some of the things we agree to, two days ago (Friday), to say that we need to collaborate a lot more. We need to share information; it is not one person recycling all the information. If you observe something escalate it and we are also taking it to the citizens. At our CDCs (Community Development Committees) and CDAs (Community Development Associations) are people that have been working with us. They have over 1,100 of them in various associations and these are the people that we take intelligence from. The intelligence we take from them, the Lagos State Neighborhood Watch is the organ that processes it in a way and manner that we can send it to the Nigeria Police Force. So, that architecture is working for us.

The EndSARS scenario gave Lagos out on how porous Lagos could be when you have people who had infiltrated. Are there things that we do not see or we cannot see that are available that you have in gathering intelligence? There are CCTVs around the cities; what other digital means do you utilise to gather intelligence that can give Lagosians peace of mind? 

I will not go into details to say this is the specific place where the cameras are, but we are working with the Department of State Security, which has a primary role for intelligence. They are the ones that comb the nooks and crannies. I get telephone calls and text messages almost on a daily basis that I share with them; in this area, we notice some movement in the bush, in this area we noticed some scrupulous people in an abandoned building; in this area, we think the movement here doesn’t speak to what we know in this neighborhood. So, Neighborhood Watch also picks all of these. Like what I said, intelligence is from the grassroots, from the CDC, CDA to the Neighborhood Watch and now to security formation and the Department of State Security who goes around the city. That is still been physical, but in terms of technology, you are aware that we are deploying our Smart City intervention in the state.

We are doing it aggressively and to date, we are installing close to 2,000 CCTV cameras all around the city. We are turning some of them into traffic management. We are using some of them for traffic control but when there is a need, we also can review security activity. We are just building a new data centre for this kind of implementation, but I cannot begin to give the full details because it is also security and we are going to make this available to the Department of State Security, so that they also can review some of these things and can also access it. It is a work in a pack and it is something that citizens need to be reassured of.

Is the commanding control centre that used to be in Ikeja still there? 

Yes, it is still there.

Does it still have the facilities because I have had to report security at some point in Lagos and I have been taken on a tour of that facility that you can almost see the whole of Lagos on one screen? 

I built that facility when I was the Chairman of the Lagos State Security Trust Fund, so I know everything we put in there. We need to retool a few things, which we are currently doing. We have actually changed the orientation and the location of the place but beyond all of that in our Ministry, we are building a new data room; a new data centre that would be specific for security. It is coming into the system already. We have got a shipment of about 21 containers that arrived about two months ago. So, all those deployments are happening gradually and we have spent a lot of money. We are not just waiting for anybody to help us out.

Lagos is very central as the commercial nerve of the country and Lagos needs to be secured. Talking about physical security, you did a ban on Okada (motorcycles), which security is one of the reasons. Are you sticking to that or extending it further? 

We have seen tremendous improvement in the areas in which okada  has been banned. In fact people have written to me to commend that, not only have we seen a drop in issues around security, robbery in cars and traffic robbery, but we have also seen a significant drop in accidents. We don’t see people being lame, cutting off limps in our hospitals again because these were reckless driving that usually terminates people’s life unexpectedly. So, we have seen tremendous improvement in that area.

Do you have a statistic to support that? 

It has dropped in the last two months. We have seen about 550 okada-related accidents at the peak of it in January/February per month, but now, it has come down to less than 100, direct okada accidents that we have seen from our hospitals. There is also a reduction in traffic robbery; it has significantly gone down. One of the things we also tell RRS is the need to have a lot of pin-down positions because it is with okada they use to do all of the maneuverings. So, they do a lot of pin-down and pedestrian monitoring. They just need to pack and walk around, make sure people can see them and can feel them. These are some of the things happening around the city.

You have been criticised perhaps as the only Governor in the whole of the South-West region that downplayed the role of Amotekun Security Network, which some have said has worked very well in other parts of the region and the reason they speculate is that of politics. Will you be considering activating the security outfit, which was considered a great answer to solving security problems in the South-West region? 

It is a great initiative and a great idea. I was part of it and I commend my colleagues for this. But this is what we forgot, I gave them the template for Amotekun in terms of the law. We have a Lagos State Neighborhood Watch; these are almost 7,000 men that have been trained, energised and working on a day-to-day in the state. There is no need to reinvent the wheel.

 So that is Lagos Amotekun? 

Yes, that is Lagos Amotekun. They know and they also appreciate it. We supported all of the equipment they need. I have continued to participate in that space. It is the template of even how we set it up that we passed around to our neighboring states and that is what everybody has copied. There is nothing in the colour of the uniform, it is how efficient and effective the security is and we believe that the Neighborhood Watch, almost 7,000 of them, are working closely with the Nigerian Police. On a weekly basis, I get a report in almost all nooks and crannies and they escalate these things to the Nigerian Police Force and that is one of the things that have helped us to be able to directly intervene and nip some of those things that you probably won’t be aware of. I get reports on a daily basis.

How much registration of residents and citizens of Lagos do we have? How can you digitally identify people? Is Lagos not like any other city in the country? 

Channels Television was represented three weeks ago when we re-launched the LASRRA card, which is now the highest digital citizen’s card that we have in this country. We just re-launched it three weeks ago right here in Lagos.

The question is how much of that do you have? 

On the database now, we have about six million Lagosians. Out of the over 20 million people in the state, six million are registered in the database.

How long do you think it can take to capture the whole of Lagos? 

It is something that people also need to come up to and that is why the likes of you also need to help us populate that this thing is available and these are the benefits that come with it. It is planning, it is for us to know who is where and how can we respond better.

Will it come to a point that you will have to enforce that if you don’t have it you cannot reside in Lagos? 

May be not reside, we will enforce it to the extent that you might not be able to get some government services – if you want to come to our hospitals, you want to come to our schools, we will get to that.

The reason I am asking that, is you talked about CCTV; in other climes, if a CCTV camera picks your face, they are able to go through a biometrics check and identify where you reside, who you are and your criminal background and all of that. When you are installing the CCTV cameras how do you then process it? 

I understand. One of the problems we have in this country is that data resides in so many places; in silos. The same data you are talking about, I can assure you there are some other federal agencies that have it. So, that is why we are collaborating with NIMC (National Identification Management Commission) and others. We have enough platform and space to be able to store them and share some of these things with us. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel, technology is the same technology everywhere. So, we don’t want to begin to knock on people’s doors and say we want to take your picture, no! If you have it, even if it is in passport registration or something as simple as registration in your bank, let us have access to some of these things and they can reside in a database where security can have access to it. Some of these things are available, it is just that those agencies are not speaking to each other deliberately or lack knowledge. So, it is the responsibility of you and me to ensure that we escalate this and we bring them to sit with each other and say this is what we need to use it for.

You are spending a lot of money on rail services in Lagos and the question is how secured will they be as a proactive measure? With what happened on the Kaduna-Abuja bound train in March where over 60 persons were attacked by terrorists and abducted, in your development of rail services in Lagos, are you considering measures to protect the rails from attacks? 

Coincidentally, today (Sunday), I have been on the road. I went on the Red line rail inspection. I started the journey from Agege and all the way to Ebute Meta with six stations and four bridges overpasses. The crew of Channels Television was with us on that journey. Our journey to ensure that we have a rail infrastructure ready in Lagos State by December is on track, it is on budget and we will meet those deadlines.

This is different from the Kaduna-Abuja rail because this is an intra-city rail network, it’s not an inter-city. It is not the 200-kilometer rail; this is a 30-35 kilometers in-city rail infrastructure. So, what you need to do is to ensure that in each of your train stations, you have sufficient CCTV cameras and documentary of who has come in into the station and ensure that you also have scanners when people are going to board the train. How do you record the movement of people so that you can have a well robust counting system? How is your payment system? Is your payment system something that you can track at the back end? We are putting a payment system that is cashless, you are not going to come and pay by cash on the counter. You must have a prepaid card and the rest of it. So, these are some of the things in our view that will deter would-be criminally minded people because they would not be passengers, that is one.

Secondly, the entire rail tracks are going to be fenced off. They are going to be walled off. We are building vehicular bridges in the stations and insulating people from possible attacks. We are even insulating vehicles, vehicles are not going to cross on the rail track. We have done bridges in Ikeja Along, Mushin, Yaba and even the difficult one, the old Apapa Road, we are doing a bridge there. So, vehicles will go on top, passengers will go on top and have the opportunity to do a complete wall off of the rail tracks.

If you go on the Blue line, from Mile 2 to Orile to National Arts Theatre it is being walled off completely and so that is the kind of thing that is going to happen on the Red line. Once that is done and you have sufficient security monitoring, as people are coming into the stations and they are getting out, if anything happens, you can also go back and check it.

Proactive and preventive measures are fantastic to think about; but should it happen, when attacks happened in Nigeria, it takes a whole lot of time before there is a response. Are you thinking about response across the rail line such that should there even be a breakdown…

We have the best professionals on our payroll already and we have thought through the entire end-to-end possibilities of things that can happen. We even have a team of policemen that are dedicated to the blue line rail corridor even before it gets started to clean up and to ensure that there are no miscreants and hoodlums on that entire corridor. But professionally, how you intend to mitigate some of the concerns that you have is to ensure that you have core professionals who are running your train service; ensure that your system is up to date and you can ensure that it is a cashless system. The moment people know that there is a back end that can know that Seun Okinbaloye came to this station based on the way and manner in which we have collected your money, you will think twice. You are not going to appear, just pay and think you can walk away, no! The moment they know that you are going to go through a turn star, which has also recorded you to go and board the train, they will think twice. So, these are some of the things that we are ensuring that will be put in place. And in the event of anything whatsoever happening, as I said to you, there are cameras that are going to be there and people will play back and ensure that we can nip things in the board.

When would the project be flagged off?

The blue line will happen first by December, the red line would be the first quarter of next year. But all of the infrastructures, hard infrastructure would be ready before the end of the year. The blue line infrastructure is almost ready. The blue line infrastructures are far slightly ahead of the red line. The difference is that the red line was conceived by our administration and we are really excited that we are completing it within our first tenure.

Where do the blue line and red line start and where do they terminate? 

Phase one of the blue line, which is what we’ve finished will start from Mile 2 and terminate at Marina. Marina is the iconic station for the blue line. Phase II of it will now push you back from Mile 2 and go all the way to Okokomaiko. The beauty of Phase II is that it is at the grid, meaning it is at ground level. There is no overhead, it is not a building like the one in Marina that is like a bridge, so it is going to be faster and quicker for us and the corridor is there to lay the tracks and be able to finish it. For phase one, we are going to start five stations from Mile 2 to Marina. We believe there is enough traffic on it.

For the Red line, it starts from Agbado, which is outskirt of Lagos to Iju to Agege to Oshodi to Mushin to Yaba to Ebute Meta. It starts from Agbado all the way to Ebute Meta in the first instance. Phase II of that incidentally, we want to do a lagoon crossing and get on to Marina at some time in the future. And outside of those two, we have four other lines that we are doing extensive visibility study on. We have committed huge resources. We need to do a viability and visibility study on them and they should be ready before the end of the year and we have seen both local and international investors who are ready because we have actually demonstrated this as a sub-national. We are the only sub-national anywhere in the world that is doing a rail by itself. People talked about Kenya and Ethiopia.  Go and ask, it is sovereign that is doing the rail in Ethiopia; it is not the city of Addis Ababa.

But you are doing this on loan.

We are being very creative in our financing. A lot of our budget is there but we are very creative with the loan. The loan is a single-digit opportunity, also with a low single-digit, you can’t get it anywhere.

Where did you get it from? 

From local banks in Nigeria; I am extremely very impressive with them. We are all stakeholders and they are with us in the Lagos journey.

Let us talk about the Apapa gridlock issue. It appears that your intervention was short-lived. You promised that you are going to fix it, what happened? 

I am looking straight to that camera, I have fixed Apapa gridlock and there is no apology for that. I have fixed it and you can ask. I am on national television. What we have done, even NPA had written letters to commend us; all of the major businesses in Apapa have written letters to us. I get a daily video recording of what is happening in Apapa. I have gotten the one for today and I am sure I will get it tomorrow morning between 7 am and 9 am, and between 1 pm and 3 pm on daily basis and it is moving. Residents in Apapa have written to me to thank us. What used to take two to three hours now takes them a 15 to 20 minutes journey.

But what is the remainder of the problem? We are doing the road from Sunrise in MTN , from the Mile 2 end going towards Apapa and that is the portion that has not been completed. I think it is a stretch not more than a kilometer or something. So, that stretch needs to be completed for you to have a complete clean-up of it. However, you still have trailers on some of these roads and why so? You have trailers because the ETO system that NPA had set up, is actually working but there has been a lot of sabotage among themselves. That is number one.

Number two is also that they do not have enough trailer parks that can take the articulated trucks off the road. We are building one for them by Orile, for which we have signed a concession with someone. It is supposed to be able to relieve about 2,000 to   2,500 off the road. So, one of the things we said is that if you have an effective call-up system, what you should do is that if your truck has not been called, you don’t have any business coming into the Apapa area. That is the only thing that has not been fully implemented.

Also, inside of the terminals themselves, Apapa and Tincan Island ports, when they ask trailers to come, maybe about 200, they need to have enough space in their facilities to be able to take those 200 inside their facilities and not leave them on the road. Those are the conversations that we are trying to clean up with them. Once you give instruction and you said at 9 am, I want 200 containers trailers to move, you must ensure that you have enough facilities in your terminal to be able to take all The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate, Olajide Adediran, has picked a popular Nollywood actress, Funke Akindele as a running mate and that is causing some kind of wave in Lagos State. He knows a lot about your party because he left APC. Do you see that as a threat in any way?

Like I said, if you have an emergency at 3 am, who would you call, what are your chances? Will you call a man that has the experience that has gone through the trenches before, that has lived with it, that understands what the issues are and that appreciates what challenge you have even at that 3 am? Or will you leave your chance to someone that doesn’t know where the dial is and does not know what the issue of governance is?

This is Lagos, this is an informed audience. This is not a tea party. We are talking of real governance and the lives of over 20 million Nigerians bigger than the economy of Ghana and the economy of Kenya, which in itself is a country. It is not a circus, it is a real thing. And I don’t want to spite anyone because I have respect for all of the candidates that have emerged and the candidate of the particular party you are talking about. How do you even begin to start? What was the pedigree? You have not run a business that has 100 people; you want to run an economy that has this number of people. The governance of Lagos is not a trial and error.

Are you willing to debate the issue of Lagos with anybody that is running this race? 

It is not a trial and error; you need to hit the ground from day one running. I know the names of all my 65 Permanent Secretaries. I know their Ministries. I know what their pedigrees are. I have worked through it and I have learned through it.

So, you think you are the man Lagosians should vote for? 

I believe that we have earned it and not just because we are talking about it, it is because we have done it.

Since your good leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu became the presidential candidate of APC, there have been talk about what he has done in Lagos. In fact, there was a debate recently about the Internal Generated Revenue (IGR) of Lagos State. How Asiwaju Tinubu meet it and how it has been now? We understand it is about N50 billion per month. The question is what do you have to show for it?

What we have to show for it is that on a monthly basis, I manage the emergency of this city. Today (Sunday) alone there have been four emergencies that had been reported. I have recruited over 650 newly recruited fire service men. I have bought 64 brand new trucks that I will invite you for the commissioning. I spent over a billion to take off the refuse in Lagos. We are building 16, 18 kilometers of rigid pavement road that run to tens of billions. We are building the biggest market in the country in Lagos. That is what we are doing.

So you are telling Lagosians that their money is working and not in the hands of third parties. 

Absolute not; you can see and feel it. Seun, you and I need to go on a tour round. You have stayed out of this city long enough, come let us do a tour round so that you can really show your audience and you have got a rich audience. You’ve got an informed audience who really believes in you so that they can see. Governance at this stage in the level of this nation, cannot be a child’s play, especially in Lagos. And by the way, whatever figure we have and you see now, we actually can triple those figures because the opportunity is there.