As the Lagos State Governor-elect, Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu, sets to take the swearing-in oath in few days time, he has also revealed his plans for the first 100 days when he resumes his position as governor of Lagos state.
During a recent interaction with select journalists in Lagos, the Lagos State Governor-elect opened up about his plans for Lagosians and what he intends to achieve in his first 100 days in office.
Read excerpts below.
What do you intend to achieve in office in your first 100 days?
We will be running a marathon as if we are running sprint because of the various things that we have to do. We are hoping that in our first 100 days, we will have a working government. This means that all of our cabinet and the major appointments that we need to have, we will have them running very quickly. We should begin to see huge solutions in our traffic management scheme. In infrastructures, we are already in the rainy season; so even if we want to do some extensions and some laybys, there is a limit to what can you do because once it’s raining, you can’t pour concrete. Even when you pour concrete, sun has to come for it to dry to open up that lay-by.
Some of those issues will come up but in terms of identifying those corridors that we need traffic improvement, we have already done all of that. In terms of places that we need to improve and increase waste management solutions, we would have done all that. In the first three months, we would have roll out loads of waste management banks, where like I mentioned during my campaigns, sorting has to start from your kitchen which is where we are going to be looking for those colours of bags and then we bring them out we have a work in progress relationship with the PSP.
I imagine we would have made some capital expense in terms of procurement of new compactor trucks and other equipment but that will take a while before it comes in but we would have made those commitments within those period as well. Like I also said on the solution to Apapa gridlock, I believe that we would have solved it but the sustenance of it will be an issue if we are not careful. They will keep coming then and now but on a sustainable basis, it’s going to cost us money to put people there. Those are things that we need to do. We will also begin to work around the civil service within that period because we understand that all of these things we are talking about, we need professionals in the civil service to work with. So, in terms of capacity development and skill gaps, we need to quickly identify where they are in the public service so that we can put right people in the right places. In the areas of health and education, we would have rolled out a more detailed plan on what we need to do to ensure that growth in our education system is improved. For early education, a strategy would have been crafted out to show us what we need to do as soon as the kids are coming back to school in September 2019. On the health side, the collaboration that we need to have with the private sector to ensure that health is accessible will be given priority.
Affordability of it might still be a challenge in terms of identifying the vulnerable people but accessibility is something that we need to quickly deal with. On the issue of infrastructure, we would have developed plans on what new roads we need to build. At that time, you also need to be planning for next year’s budget. All these things we need to begin to implement very quickly. On the power sector, I imagine that in our 100 days in office, we would have a clear-cut policy with all the Discos and all the Gencos on how we must ensure that Lagos gets powered up very, very quickly.
