We’re Desperate To Change Lagos —Fashola

A: I think that in a democracy, in any organisational agglomeration of people, you cannot please everybody. That is why indeed, for you to emerge governor you don’t need everybody to vote for you. You only need the majority. This is about balancing interests. I have said it repeatedly that whatever decision we take, we will do so believing that it is of benefit to the majority of people. Yes, we took some decisions that hurt people. The question is: why do we take them? A beautiful Lagos, a new Lagos. Is that such a bad thing to aspire to? So if we all agreed that a beautiful and new Lagos we must have, it must come with some pains. Unfortunately so. To fail to do something is to lose Lagos. God forbids that. Many people forget that Lagos has no innate right to be Lagos, but must continue to position itself to remain Lagos. We have seen empires destroyed and lost. We have seen nations disappear from the surface of the earth; literally so. When I was a lot younger, Ibadan was more or less the commercial and administrative nerve centre of the whole South-West region. Twenty years ago, New York had lost its businesses, lost its allure to crime. It took Giuliani to restore it. Businesses were leaving the city in droves. So there is no inherent right to it; you must continue to work at it. The important thing is that those people who are displaced, those who are pained, will have their pains mitigated by trying to relocate them. I want to see a Lagos where there are no slums. For us to achieve that, we must first of all, move the people away from the slums, build the slums into liveable settlements. When you look at it today, if they did not displace people from Olowogbowo, we won’t have Eko Bridge. A significant number of people had to be moved so that millions can make use of the route. That is the tough decision, the difficult choice leaders must at one time or the other make. The important thing is to make them not for private benefit, but for public and collective good. It is a different thing if you are seeing me reclaim an area and giving it to my cousin or commissioner to open a shop.

What we are doing is, look, this can be beautiful, we can build a new centre here and we can plant green here which sustains life. Our life expectancy is below 50 and for those people who can afford overseas medical treatment it’s fine. But what about the vast majority who cannot? We have to clear the drains for them so that malaria won’t kill them. So if one rich person builds a house across that drainage channel and exposes the whole community to malaria and cholera, when the epidemic breaks out, TheNEWS will call me and say: ‘Governor, what are you doing?’ And in those your small columns, you will write: Governor Fashola, save us. You know the rest. So it’s a difficult choice.

If the people of Lagos say stop, we don’t want a new city, I will stop. It is not Fashola’s city, it’s our city.

Q: How much have you done in trying to reduce the pains?

A: We have done a lot. If you go to the people at Adeniji-Adele, all of those areas where they used to sell drums, we fenced them so that we could take some areas from there. We created a section for the young boys, who used to play football there. The Area Boys who were there, defecating in the place, are the people benefiting from the green. They are the labourers working there to earn a living and that is a huge benefit. We have created a new settlement for some of the drum sellers close to Owode Onirin. We are not just dumping them there. We are making it habitable so that they can operate from there. At the same time we have located three centres in each of the senatorial districts where we want to convert to industrial parks, with dedicated power for all the welders and the rest who were displaced from there. We are doing all that so they can practise their trade without hindrance. It is only in this country that you find people selling blocks by the road side. But we can organise it such that if you need blocks, you know where to go and get them. It is the same thing with furniture and other things. All we have to do is make the area good enough for them. It will be such that you work in a park and when you close, you take the BRT bus and go home. There is a lot of work in progress, we can’t finish it. But the important thing is that we have to start and show the right path.

We have looked at the damages that could arise in some cases where drainages have been blocked by buildings. And in some cases we have redefined drainage routes that cost a lot of money. We don’t want to devastate people. What it means is that wherever it is possible to take the alternative option, we do that. In some instances for example, there is a market by the walls of our housing estate in Agege that just sprang up. I asked them to demolish it. But the day they brought the demolition plan for approval, I approved it but put a condition that they should not implement it until we build a new market for them. That is why they are still there. Now, we have acquired a site and we are trying to put up a new market for them. We understand the pains of our people, the poverty and the need for them to trade. But with all of that, they will do more business and prosper more if the global economy is more prosperous. People must learn to realise that no country grows on the strength of its own resources alone. As we are sitting down here, millions of Nigerians and Lagosians are investing in property in New York and other places across the globe. We are contributing to the growth of those economies, we are travelling there on holidays, supporting their airlines, hotels and creating tourism business there. Why can’t they come here? The only way we can bring that growth here is first of all, to make our city attractive, make it beautiful to see, safe to live in, efficient for business to function. Ultimately, who are you selling goods to? Is it not the populace? We want to increase that population, invest in population so that businesses can grow.

Q: Talking about making Lagos a better place, I am inclined to ask you this question about Oshodi. A lot of people have given up on the place and it’s like the people who sell things by the road side and create traffic gridlock in Oshodi will never leave the place. As the Governor of Lagos State, what is your plan for that notorious place?

A: I believe that if we can make traffic move in Oshodi, we would have solved almost half of the problem of Lagos West Senatorial District comprising Ikeja, Ilupeju, Mushin, Matori, Bolade, GRA and a host of others. Having closely studied where the problem is, we realised that the problem is on Agege Motor Road. The reason is that it is the link road between Ikeja, Agege and Yaba, Surulere, Lagos Island. That was the link between Lagos and the Western Region. That was the road to the Airport when I was a child and it was a well built road; three lanes on both sides and it was a major highway. It was as Lagos was expanding that they decided to build a by-pass, which is Ikorodu Road. It used to be called Ijebu Road. So if you were coming from Ikeja, from Agege, you just drove through Oshodi, Cappa, Challenge, Mushin and you were on your way to Lagos Island. That was the main road. We now built a by-pass and all of us abandoned the main road for a by-pass. So if I am coming from Agege to Idi Oro, instead of driving straight, the shortest distance, I will first of all go through Mobolaji Bank-Anthony Way, all the way down to Jibowu, then reverse to Idi-Oro. In the process, you burn fuel, tires and all of us are choked. Once you are coming, nobody even thinks of Oshodi anymore because it is not passable. So the man who is going to Mushin must first come to Ikorodu Road which is supposed to be an inter-state road out of town. It now became an intra-city road. If we relieve that place, re-organise those who are trading there with a more formal arrangement, raise the level of the shops in the market to accommodate them, the road will be free. They want to do business and we want them to do business, but they must do it in a way that does not hurt other people. If you count the number of people who are trading there, at a very generous figure, let us say one million. The remaining 17 million of us are suffering because one million people want to trade. That cannot be democracy. Democracy recognises the respect of rights. Your right to trade stops where my right to freedom of movement begins. So we are trying to arrange those rights in a way that they don’t clash by defining the boundaries of duty.

Q: They generate a lot of refuse…

A: That is part of the problem. It’s not just the traffic, there is refuse, the dirty environment, all of which can be efficient. If all of these are in the market, properly organised, the refuse truck can come in and take the rubbish away. It even creates jobs because we can’t even syndicate people now to take the refuse. In most malls you visit in Europe and America, you find people whose duty it is to just pick litter. Once there is a market of three to four floors, you can assign people to each floor and as the places are being littered people are clearing them away to collection areas onward to disposal points.

Q: You think they will stay in that market?

A: They will. Why not?

Q: Because in the past, governments have built markets that these people refused to go…

A: I am talking of the future and I have given you some of the reasons for the problems in the past–no time to plan or implement.

Q: There is this saying that an idle hand is the devil’s workshop. What has your administration done to empower these young people who otherwise would take to crime?

A: I do not believe that crime is the solution to hunger. But I accept that hunger is a major predisposition and that is why our security initiatives do not start and end with policing. Because at the time you are policing in any event, there is already a victim. We want to get to a situation where we can ensure that the number of victims is reduced as much as is humanly possible. We recognise the economic impact of security. That is why we have such a huge budget. That is the first thing because everything we do is directed at mitigating poverty. In the last 11 months we have been constructing all over the city and everywhere you go, you will find labourers being employed, keeping their staff strength, paying salaries. You will find other people like food vendors, water sellers being economically useful one way or the other. In those sites, there is a demand for iron rods, cement, sand and distributors of those products and other building materials are also benefiting. So the economy is moving because they are galvanising the economy. Our beautification programme is also creating jobs because so many graduates have now set up landscaping companies. While we are taking the big ones we are equally encouraging the small ones to learn horticulture. Go and take statistics of flower sellers and those who are cultivating seedlings and they will tell that there has never been this kind of prosperity. It’s a boom period for them and those are the real grassroots. The Area Boys are the ones also working at the beautification sites in Marina. They are working with the contractor. They first drove him away when he came. I went back there with him. If you go to Adeniji-Adele, they are the ones now maintaining and cleaning the place and are being trained how to nurture seedlings. We have built a small nursery there and some of the boys are in street-sweeping gangs and immediately any party ends in Onikan here, 9 or 10 pm, by the time you get there around midnight, it is all cleared. We are keeping everybody in his territory and you will work. They are collecting between N5,000 and N10,000 for different types of jobs. We are engaging professionals at various levels and our mortgage scheme has necessitated that property be valued and assessed and if you ask them they will tell you that this is a boom period for them. It is an economy that is on its way and it is taking shape and it can only get bigger and better.

Q: While many people are happy with the massive road rehabilitation you have carried out, there are those who believe that fixing these roads won’t solve the problem. They point to Lekki for example. There is a new road that leads to Lekki, yet there is always traffic gridlock. Their question is: why is Lagos refusing to build access roads? They are saying that across the coast line, there could be a new road that would decongest Lekki for example, where people are running away to go and rent houses on the mainland. What is your plan?

A: First of all, I don’t agree with you that people are moving away from Lekki to the Mainland. Lekki is the most sought after real estate today. I know how many applications and payments I receive. From the time we built that road till now, the value of land has risen phenomenally. But the thinking for additional road is correct and is part of our plan. The truth is that the plan will not germinate out of the ground. It also has to be financed and that is why I am raising my voice everyday for people to pay tax. If we have more money, we will scale out quicker. Today, I have pegged my budget at only N403 billion because that is what I think is reasonable in terms of my revenue expectations. I need more than a trillion but given the tax behaviour of the past, I can’t see how in 12 months I can change that to generate a trillion naira. The contractors are there and people are coming from outside Lagos. Construction firms are moving into Lagos from Israel, Egypt and other places. So if I have more money, I will do more. But we have the plan because the coastal roads would run parallel to this road. But don’t forget that this road is being run by a consortium, a partnership thing. So the economy must be right to start and it is part of what we intend to do.

We want to start from where the traffic is, where people are, so that they can get the toll and use it to finance the other one. The coastal road you are talking about now is such that there are no sufficient houses there to generate the toll. But work is in progress and it is not about just building roads now. Those days are gone because we are re-mastering the whole city, a new plan to integrate what is there and then see what road we really need. To link where? Where will the residences and offices be? All these will be in the masterplan that should be completed this year. It will be for the whole of Lagos anyway. As I said during the campaigns, the whole plan is to build self-sufficient communities so that all of us are not heading in the same direction in the morning. When you masterplan it, each area has its own shopping malls, central business district, schools and hospitals and what we need is to inter-connect, just like they do in other countries. All of these are also traffic management strategies. It is not just about building roads as I have shown you. If we relieve Agege Motor Road, we would solve a major problem. As we are building roads, we are chasing a balance because we are also trying to look for where to build multi-level car parks. The truth is that if you build roads and park on it, it doesn’t move. We are also trying to re-organise the markets so that we take the street trader, who must survive, to somewhere where he or she can survive. I recognise their right to trade, but what I disagree with is doing it on the roads. And as their governor, I must find a place for them to do it. But all of these cannot happen overnight. My duty is to do as much as I can, set the path and plan for the future.

Q: How about the Fourth Mainland Bridge?

A: I made a commitment and by the grace of God, I am going to fulfil it. We have received very serious presentations and offers up to design, soil test and all of that. We are still trying to negotiate some issues and make choices that are in the best interests of Lagosians. We are still taking expert references here and there, to assess the capacities of competing proposals.

Q: And you are sure you will find the money to execute it?

A: The money is not the problem because if it is going to be a tolled road, I don’t have to pay for it. But I owe a responsibility to ensure first that it is a good road, that the tolls do not create an economic burden for the people, that the concessionaire makes a good business but does not profiteer. If he can make his money in 19 years, why should I sign the interest of Lagos away for 35 years? So we are doing all of these calculations. As soon as he has made a decent profit, the asset must become that of Lagos, for my successor and my own children. So those are the responsibilities I have to take because I want to be accountable for everything I do.

Q: There is a feeling in town, somehow, that your government is bent on imposing taxes on virtually everything; that you want to raise money from every source. Are you aware of this?

A: I don’t think that is fully correct. All through my campaigns, I told the people what I was going to do and how I was going to do it. I told them that we are going to pay taxes. The truth is that I must make this point very clear that as I speak today, I have not passed any tax law. As I speak today, not one. The only revenue generating law that I have proposed is the one for tourism and hotels, which has not yet been passed by the House of Assembly. All I am trying to do is to ensure that we collect the taxes that I am sure are due to us by virtue of laws passed at the federal level, which we are duty-bound to collect, and by laws made by my predecessors with the authority of the people of Lagos. If the people of Lagos do not want those taxes, there are representatives in the House of Assembly, let them repeal the laws. But my duty is to implement the laws. And the reasons for taxes is that we are complaining of crime and economy that is not growing when only a percentage of the people who make money contribute back to the common purse–the civil servants because we can deduct it from source. All the others are something else. Paying tax is one thing, but paying it voluntarily is another problem. So we spend so much money and energy trying to collect taxes that are legitimately due. But instead of them to pay N10 that is legitimately due, you will probably spend N3 to employ people to administer form, do this or that. There is a huge collection cost. At the end of the day, your net tax would still be N7 when you were supposed to get N10.

The truth is that this is the way modern society evolved. I am only passing through, I will soon go on but before then, we have decided that we will share collective wealth. Taxes are the way to redistribute the wealth of the community so that the rich can support the poor in order to avoid anarchy. If people had been paying taxes, two things would have happened: One, they would have been more involved in their government because their money is there; secondly, our economy would have been better because as I say, it is no excuse that because it is a bad government that is there you won’t pay. No. Your recourse is to go and remove that bad government at the election. But if you don’t care who the governor is, it means you don’t care because your money is not there. That is why instead of all of us asking for pipe-borne water, we are spending our money to dig boreholes, supply power and build bullet-proof houses. But if we had all put in our money, we would have all called the people and asked: My friend, what are you doing with this money? It is like being in a club, whether it is social club or your village square meeting, you pay dues. If you pay dues and if the president talks too much, you can challenge him. That is democracy because everybody gets involved.

Q: Already you have been taken to court in respect of this Driver’s Licence Lagos State wants to introduce. Should you introduce such a licence? Because if every state were to direct people to get its driver’s licence, that means one person needs to get 36 different types if one has to travel nationwide ?

A: First of all, I haven’t seen any summons and my Attorney-General has not told me that there are any summons. But it would be the best thing to happen to this democracy if the FRSC chooses constitutional means to express their grievance. It would be a big pass mark for our democracy. The day the court says Lagos stop, we will stop. Having said that, the argument about 36 states initiating the same thing is an argument that is extremely fallacious and I will demonstrate it to you. Do we have one central licence plate? Does Abuja not bear Abuja? Does Ogun not bear Ogun? Does Lagos not bear Lagos? Who has ever stopped anybody from entering Abuja? Have I stopped vehicles from Abuja or Ogun from driving into Lagos? The truth is that we either want a federation or we don’t want it. In the federal arrangement that we have today, I am empowered by the constitution to do what I am doing. Let us go to court and let the court interpret the constitution. All over the world, in federations, each state has its own driver’s licence and issues its number plate with its own colour and logo and they operate on the principle of reciprocity and mutuality. Let us go further. What is the issue here? Driver’s licence.

Q: Their argument is that you just want to make money whereas they are more interested in safety.

A: Wait a minute. Let us see who has the safety and let us see who has the money. I told Lagosians during my campaign that as part of our traffic management strategy, we will build drivers’ education centres. I have completed three of them and the remaining two are between 80 and 90 per cent completed. I have ordered electronic driving simulators to be fitted into them. I have ordered eye testing materials for the whole comprehensive test of drivers in Lagos. Now if I am the one who tests them, who tests their eye sight, who teaches them how to drive, who should licence them? That is one.

Two, what is the whole purpose of a driver’s licence? I said during the campaign that a significant part of the problem we have with traffic management is that you have people who are not trained to drive driving on the roads. People who should be on the slow lane don’t know the difference between slow and fast lanes. People at roundabouts, who don’t know who has the right of way. Sometimes when they hit each other, they stay there and argue. The only way, apart from building and clearing the roads, is also to ensure that only people who know the road culture are made to operate vehicles. The motor vehicle is a machine like a computer and you cannot operate it without training. That is all that a driver’s licence does. It certifies that this man has been trained how to operate this machine; he can operate it now. The certification doesn’t put you on the road, it only authorises you to drive a car.

The law that set up the FRSC does not give it the power to issue driver’s licence. The power it has is to design the licence, not to issue. And indeed if you see the current driver’s licence purportedly being issued by the FRSC, it’s being signed by the state licensing officer for Lagos. The fact that something has been done over the years doesn’t make it right. We are a people; we must be progressive and must challenge things. Even if it is right, can’t it be better? I believe that there is a level beyond excellence which is called par excellence and I want to get there.

You (FRSC) produce this thing but there is a huge scarcity, fuelling fraud because people cannot get it. You don’t have the capacity to satisfy the whole country because as it is now, people fill the forms, we pass them to you but they don’t come out and you say they should pay. But we said no, they cannot pay for service that has not been rendered. Until Lagos started producing vehicle licences, the official price was N3,000 but you could not get it for N50,000. It was fraud because it was a racket. It is the same racket that we want to break in the interest of the people. Let people walk in and get a driver’s licence in five minutes and let us stop all of these things. You take three to four months to get a licence. Do you test them? No. That is why people die every day on the road. We should be commended for what we are doing and other states should be asked to join us. The responsibility of FRSC is to integrate the data. People commit offence in this state and there are no records. Now we want to correct that.

Q: Before Governor Tinubu left office, he said the state was generating N9 billion at a time. What is the difference now?

A: The revenue of the state is not where it should be. We are not getting enough compared to the demand and population we have. But we have put in so many strategies–the aggressive advocacy for taxation and of course we put in policies to make tax administration simple. We are equally encouraging the self assessment process and designed a very simple form where what we want is not to know how much you earn; you declare for yourself and on the basis of that, assess yourself and pay. We are also giving incentives, recognising those who pay their taxes voluntarily, as we did to Chief Razaq Okoya, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, IBTC, Coca-Cola. We are also addressing complaints of double taxation by publishing an approved list for collection applicable to all local governments so that people will know what taxes they are supposed to pay. And we are encouraging people to also not compromise; when they feel that they are unjustly treated, they should complain. We have set up help lines and centres in the office of the Special Adviser on Taxation and Revenue to respond to these claims. We have also set up appeal tribunals especially on the Land Use charge and we have made the tax administration as simple as possible. Because if you get an assessment that you think is in excess of what you think you should pay, we put in a law that says pay the sum that you claim that you should and then let us go and dispute it. But if I give you an assessment of N10 and you say it is N4 and you still hold that N10, and you expect me to come and clear refuse, to provide security, you are not doing us and yourself any good.

Q: What is your target?

A: It is will be unfair to Lagos to set a target now. This year, we are setting for the board of the state Internal Revenue Service a minimum of N15 billion per month. That is the target we have set for the IRS because we have other sources of revenue – statutory allocation, etc – which do not go too far because by the time you pay salaries, it is finished. But when all of the things we are putting in place take effect, the economy grows bigger and resources of this state should be in the region of at least N30 to N40 billion every month because the economy is huge. The state hosts the Stock Exchange with a capital value of N12 trillion and it is growing. Banks are declaring mega profit and the economy is picking up. So it will be unfair to fetter the tax horizon of Lagos State.

Q: The standard of education is said to be on the wane, forcing many parents and guardians to send their children and wards to private schools, since public schools are assumed to be very bad now. The private schools too. What exactly are you doing to correct this?

A: I don’t agree with you that educational standard is on the wane unless you locate it in a period that is not in this period, because in the last eight years and 11 months, a lot has been done that was not done for years. You need to see the schools that had no benches and what they have been turned to. There is a difference, in my view, between the facts and the conclusions that we draw from the facts. There has been a criminal neglect of so many sectors, not just the schools, for so many years. But to say that it is still on the wane after years is not to give credit for efforts that have been made. It may not have been where it should be but there are very visible activities. All of what we are talking about are institutions driven by people and if they fail, it is the people who failed. There will be situations where somebody tenders for a contract but goes ahead to perform a shoddy job. I saw one of them during my local government tour. They said I should come and commission the project. When I got there I asked if he (the contractor) would put his child there and he said no. Then I said he should demolish it. This will happen occasionally and that is why we have put stringent measures in place, including contract supervision, project monitoring, etc, so that we won’t get to that stage again. The lesson has been learnt that we need to do more project monitoring, more project inspection and the people need to get involved in Project Lagos and Project Nigeria.

The fact that people take their children overseas or to private schools does not support the conclusion that public schools are bad. It doesn’t because in every economy, no government can provide all the needs of the people. That is why some prefer to have their own cars instead of public transportation. You cannot legislate that everybody should take public transport but as a government, while some people reserve that right, you have a duty to provide for those who do not have the means. I cannot legislate for my commissioners or anybody not to take their children to private schools but I have a duty to provide very good public schools, which is the duty we have set for ourselves: that our public schools will compete with private schools.

Q: During the burial of Governor Daniel’s mother in Ogun State, the governor said that perhaps the greatest challenge they have is bringing you into the PDP fold. Have they made an offer you cannot resist?

A: Let me say first of all that I take the offer as a compliment and on behalf of the leadership of the Action Congress and the people of Lagos State I thank them for the offer. But the answer is no; a very, very categorical no. I am saying no for so many reasons. First of all, we have opted for multi-party democracy. The people of Lagos have made their choice based on the programme and policies that we presented to them. Therefore, sorry PDP, the answer is no.

Two, I think it will be the greatest treachery on my part. People died to secure this mandate.

Three, I am sorry I don’t see ideology in PDP. I am a man of ideas. When you look at it even from their party slogan – ‘PDP, Power’ – that is not it. ‘Action Congress, Democracy for Ever,’ that is our ideology. The answer is an emphatic no but I thank them for their offer.

Q: We want you to talk about the health sector.

A: Let me say something about the sector for the completeness of records. A great revolution was started by the last administration under Governor Tinubu and we see our health challenge in three sectors: the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors. A lot of work has been done in the tertiary health sector, which is to upgrade all of the facilities at LASUTH Ikeja. But that hospital has received the kind of traffic it ought not to receive because it should be a referral and specialist centre and teaching hospital. But it has become a daily hospital performing the functions of primary and secondary health care centres like the general hospitals. So we will build more general hospitals. Now, Alimosho has come on stream, Shomolu has come on stream and we are building Ajeromi in Ajegunle. Beyond that we are also reviewing the larger health sector, targeting certain sub-sectors like maternal and child mortality. The figures in Nigeria are not acceptable. The World Health Organisation in their recent report noted that except for Lagos, it is like disaster in other places in the country. But we are not even satisfied with those figures. That is why we are evolving strategies to deal with maternal and child health centres so that we can distribute the opportunities away from massive children’s facilities at Island Maternity. So we are building 100-bed maternal and child health care centres in five major local government areas – Ifako-Ijaiye, Ikorodu, Surulere, Ajegunle and Shomolu.

They will be especially dedicated to issues concerning the health of women and children and they will be of a standard that will be comparable to any that you will find anywhere in the world when they are finished. They are in various stages of completion. We just awarded some and some had started when we did our supplementary budget late last year. We think that will add to our capacity to bring child health care and maternal health issues closer to the people instead of them having to travel long distances.

Of course I also said we are building more general hospitals. We are upgrading Gbadaga Gneral Hospital into a tertiary hospital to become an annex of Ikeja. Our plan is to locate our cancer, cardiac and kidney centres in Gbagada. Our hope is that maybe by the end of next year, we will not have to pay for kidney referrals overseas. We will use all that money to build capacity and attract people back home. What we are trying to do is provide facilities that will bring back all the expertise that we have lost to other countries. Currently, I am told that we have about 20,000 Nigerian medical practitioners of different types – doctors, nurses, anaesthetists and other professionals – in Europe and America. Don’t forget how it happened – from the day when it became frustratingly difficult for them to perform their job.

Most of them were performing surgery with candle lights. That is one of the major reasons they had to leave the country for greener pastures abroad. They are the ones who went to set up the health care systems of Saudi Arabia and so many other countries. In which case, we have the human resource. What is missing is the operational environment, which is what we are trying to put in place. Of course, we are working with the local government also, so that they can take responsibility that is there – primary health care, managing malaria, diarrhoea, education on how not to contract them, etc – so that cases of malaria should not get to the teaching hospitals. What we have done is that instead of using our intervention fund, which we have in our own budget for local government, to build those health centres, we will be using it to upgrade and equip existing centres so that they can at least, begin to function. It is one thing to build them and it is another to render the service that they are built to render. We have also gone on serious advocacy. All of what we are doing about drainage, beautification and water supply are health issues. Clean environment, drainage, etc, promote health.

Hopefully we will increase the life expectancy rate the WHO now puts at below 50 by these practices. We will also create even from the green, a healthier oxygen-rich environment. Beyond that, we have awarded 15 micro water works of two million gallons. That will add another 30 million gallons of water supply to Lagos State. Statistically and by empirical analysis, we realised that wherever there is more water, there is more life and health. Each of those micro schemes comes with a reticulation of five kilometres around it so that wherever it is located, it will serve 30 miles radius. We have started again the hypertension and diabetes clinics. These are diseases that are on the one hand congenital but in most cases are induced by lifestyle. There are so many people who are walking time bombs, combining both ailments. It is awareness that we want to create.