Today, the Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu administration marks its first year in office. One year in the life of an administration means a lot: it is good enough time to assess a government in order to determine whether it is in course or it is floundering.
The Sanwo-Olu administration is a child of circumstance and necessity. It came into public consciousness like a bolt from the blue; and when it happened, it was crystal clear that this was a special child divinely ordained for exploits.
Sanwo who? That was the refrain on many lips when the man emerged in the Lagos political horizon. But no sooner had this happened than it started crystalising that a wonder was set to explode. The man carved a niche for himself as a “giant-killer”, walloping a sitting governor in a convincing manner to warrant his opponent throwing in the towel, willy-nilly, without a whimper.
He came into office by massive public acclaim but soon got confronted by adversity of varying dimensions. First, there was paucity of funds in the account of the most viable state in the country. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. But instead of whining and moaning about this adversity, Sanwo-Olu adopted a positive attitude of forging ahead by devising an ingenious method of pAutting adversity to good uses. He refused to adopt the weather-beaten path of castigating the administration he succeeded, even when it was apparent that many things did not add up in the method of the former administration.
Sanwoolu’s administration coincided with the advent of massive downpour when the potholes it inherited were made worse to become boreholes. Roads could not be mended when the heavens were opening up, but because of the public outcry which hardly recognised the constraints the inclement weather threw up, efforts were made to lessen the people’s agony by mending the roads here and there. However, much of asphalt went down the drain as they were washed off by the unceasing rains. It attracted much of public opprobrium for an innocent administration that came in when public disgust with the state of Lagos roads was on high.
Focused and determined, Sanwoolu and his team of his deputy, Dr Obafemi Hamzat and others, remained undaunted and forged ahead with the kind of engineering they employed. But it undoubtedly affected the new administration’s public rating at that early stage.
When the administration was struggling with the rains to make the roads somewhat motorable, it also had to weigh in, banning the use of motorcycles for public transport. That bold and courageous decision did not sit well with okada riders, and backed by a combination of vocal resentment by detractors of the government and uninformed but partisan and populist commentators, a strong attempt was made to force the administration’s hands to the end of reversing itself. It refused to buckle, giving a strong signal that it would not pander to popular but perilous public sentiments.
Safety of lives and property was central in the focus of the government and it held on to that like a leech, insisting that his administration had a duty to save lives and prevent the unintended but callous extermination of innocent lives by untrained and largely incompetent okada riders.
When the hoopla was thinning out, the coronavirus pandemic arrived on our shores and taxed the administration’s energy to sapping. But instead of the Sanwo-Olu administration to buckle under, it exhibited such ingenuity that in no time, it proved itself extraordinarily outstanding in dealing with the pandemic.
Lagos soon became the epicentre, but it was an opportunity beckoning that Sanwo-Olu packs a lot of vibrant ideas up his sleeves, galvanising his medical team led by his health commissioner, Prof. Akin Abayomi and the First Lady, Ibijoke Sanwo-Olu, herself as a quality medical doctor, to evolve measures that made Lagos a show-piece in exemplary performance for other states to marvel at.
The head of the Presidential Task Force on Corvid-19 and Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, went round the country on the operation “pound the pandemic to submission” and what he saw in Lagos made him to declare that Lagos was the place to be where other states could come to learn.
It was not a statement made on the spur of the moment by the SGF. A visit to the maiden Isolation Centre inside the main bowl of the Onikan Stadium would convince any cynic that Lagos’ preparedness for the pandemic was unparalleled. The panoramic view of the wards of the isolation centre gives the impression that one is seeing the wards of St Thomas Hospital or Kings College Hospital or Lewisham University Teaching Hospital, all in London, with patients’ beds that are 21st Century-compliant, unlike the analogue beds in some other states’ isolation centres.
In the area of housing, unlike other administrations that delighted in abandoning the projects begun by their predecessors to vegetate and decay, Sanwo-Olu showed forward-looking trait by completing the housing estates he inherited and allocating them to lucky bidders, thus helping to reduce housing shortages in the state.
He is affecting roads construction in several parts of the urban and rural areas of the state, and the commissioning that are being done across the state this week and the next will be proof-positive that the Sanwo-Olu administration knows its onions.
As functionaries of the state government render accounts of their stewardships, Lagosians will be able to acknowledge this administration as worthy of its mandate. A close observation will reveal that Sanwo-Olu is not one to covet shoddy job or sycophancy. He’s bristling with more vibrant ideas that will be wìdely acknowledged in the course of the coming months.
Governor Sanwo-Olu has also shown himself as a good PR manager the way he has superbly cultivated several segments of the society, including the labour and the traditional institutions, whose relevance in their domains cannot be downplayed.
At the commencement of his electioneering for the governorship seat, someone conned an appellation for Mr Sanwo-Olu as “Mr Sellable”. He has to date lived up to that nickname. And if he forges on as he’s currently doing, there is every likelihood that his record of solid achievements in just one year will become a child’s play at his second anniversary!
⦁ Osiyemi is Special Adviser to Governor Sanwo-Olu on Chieftaincy Affairs.