The Business of Governing in Nigeria

Lagos State Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola
Babatunde Raji Fashola has been the Governor of Lagos State, Nigeria, since 2007. Previously he was Chief of Staff to his predecessor as Governor and a member of various state councils and boards.
HPR: You’ve been described in many news outlets as a unique leader for Nigeria. What do you think distinguishes you from other Nigerian leaders? Do you see yourself as having a special responsibility, a special view that is unique?
Gov. Babatunde Fashola: I don’t think so. I think that sometimes some things that are said about me are exaggerated. I am only one man and most of what has happened in our state has been developed around teamwork. I don’t think that we have reinvented the wheel. We just go back to the basic understanding of why we are in government, what the focus of government is, and what is expected of us. We believe that the sacred purpose of government is to provide a platform for the aspirations and expressions and the hopes of people who look to government as a delegate of authority, to act on behalf of the majority.
We just work as a business. What would the people expect of us, and what do we expect them to do? Are they paying their taxes, are they obeying laws? What should we give back? These are the fundamentals of business. These kinds of things are not new in Africa, even in my country. It happened when I was a child, the period when the nation ran on the basis of three or four regions and there was prosperity and life was pretty orderly and busy. So nothing has happened then, we’re just going back to business.

HPR: What do you see as your role as governor of Lagos State within the context of Nigeria as a whole?
BF: When you look at the role that Lagos plays not only in Nigeria’s economy, but in Nigeria’s politics, and in the politics and economy of the subregion as a major hub for commerce and industry, a melting pot for all ethnic nationalities in the country, a point of safe-haven for displaced peoples of the subregion, it is important that the government that exists in Lagos recognize its responsibility to ensure safety and security of the lives of the people and their properties. Lagos must continue to remain alluring for people of all diverse backgrounds, religious backgrounds, social and economic levels. If you go to Lagos, from whatever background or country you come, you will find somebody that either dines like you, cooks like you, dresses like you, or has tribal marks or accents or speaks your dialect. There is a place for everybody there.

HPR: According to the United Nations, Lagos will become the third most populous city in the world by 2015, with around 20 million people in the greater metro area. This presents immense challenges as governor. There are so many elements that you have to take into consideration. How do you function with all these different elements?
BF: We try to run government like a business, coming to terms with what needs to be done today, what needs to be done in four years’ time, what needs to be done in twenty years’ time. We understand that population growth can be a liability and can be an asset. Large populations provide a market and Lagos has benefited from that market as a favored destination for trade and services. That enables us to contribute a huge percentage of the country’s GDP.
But it has, of course, its own burdens. More people means more traffic. More people means more children, who need healthcare. More children need education. More mothers who need antenatal and postnatal care. More people requiring safety and security, so you need more policemen. So it requires a busy public expenditure, balanced against the objective of making life bearable and livable. Now, coming from the background of the political instability that has characterized the [country] in the last two decades, this has more or less taken the attention of the government away from development.
HPR: How do you plan to refocus government efforts on development?
BF: We need to arrest the deficit of infrastructure. That’s why here, since 2007, our projects have been directed towards building public infrastructure, roads, bridges, schools, water supplies, and healthcare facilities. We know that to mitigate desperate conditions, we can arrest the situation, we can arrest crime and then we can begin to plan for the future. We are already making plans to make Lagos habitable and livable for 40 million people. That’s the plan, long term.
We are doing a new regional master plan for the state, breaking that region into cities that are manageable. This will help us define what are the principal infrastructures to link new towns so that people can really spread. The congestion in Lagos now is likely attributed not to the population and urbanization but because the population is heading only in one direction in the state, where the infrastructure exists. So, [we] are building on the eastern edges of the state an expanded highway, expanding from four lanes to six lanes, to open up that side of town. And on the western access, we are expanding from four lanes to ten lanes, with a rail facility line in the middle. People will know that they can connect any part of the city, especially the center, which is the central business district, in at most 30 to 40 minutes.
These are, in my view, the plans to make the city sustainable because you cannot stop the people from coming in. And we are already seeing results. Property investments in these places are beginning to move. We are already planning how to expand the water supply. We are planning waste management, opening new landfill sites. We are constructing new abattoirs to provide animal slaughter sites. So, it’s a lot of work in progress for the future.
HPR: I’ve seen also that you’ve developed a green program, “operation green.” How do you see this program as part of your long-term development goals?
BF: It depends on where you are coming from and what you seek to achieve. The green program is only a subcomponent of our total environmental policy. Lagos is a coastal state, so it is threatened by the Atlantic. There are also projects, civil works, and engineering projects that deal with that. There is the problem of solid waste management, and there is still a long way to go in recycling and reuse. In terms of green, Lagos had a reputation for being a chaotic city. I am a firm believer that the environment itself has a huge impact on how people behave. If the environment is disorderly, people will act in a disorderly manner, and that was one of the underlying reasons for the green program.
The other reason, of course, was that many of the green spaces that we talk about today in Lagos used to be refuse dumps right in the heart of the city. So we cleaned them up, and we found, as we expected, that there is a reverence for green. It has given us a cleaner city, and the people who lived off that disorder became more useful to themselves and more useful to the state, needing fewer policemen to police them because they are now employed. They pay taxes. There is a sobriety in the environment. People feel safe. People feel comfortable.
HPR: If you could tell Harvard students one thing about Nigeria, what would it be?
BF: I think that Harvard students particularly and people generally should take a second look at Nigeria. I think they should take whatever unpleasant information about Nigeria in context. I think most of that information is coming from Nigeria. I don’t read it as indicative of how bad the country is. On the contrary, I see it as indicative of the very high expectations that we have set for the leadership. Leadership must rise to those levels of expectation because clearly that is what people want.
The Nigeria that is posted in the news has so many other pleasant stories to tell and you need to encounter it to see, and I say this with every sense of responsibility. There are a lot of good things happening out there, but I still think that because it is a work in progress, our people think that it is not enough and there’s this feeling that we can all do more. I acknowledge that we can. That is the context in which to see Nigeria. It is an extremely high expectation of government, especially from a people who have lived on what I call “a diet of broken promises” over the decades. They are tired of promises. They want to see things happen.
Felix de Rosen ’13 is a Staff Writer.