Hon. Abdurrazaq Balogun, the Lagos Governorship Candidate of Action Alliance (AA) in March 18th governorship election, says Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu may adopt the party’s REBIRTH Agenda to provide comfort and succour for residents.
Balogun, a 40-year-old Computer Scientist and IT expert, who vied for the top seat but lost made the appeal in an interview with newsmen in Lagos, following Sanwo-Olu’s inauguration for second term on Monday.
Congratulating Sanwo-Olu, the young politician said that the party’s Rebirth Agenda was geared towards the hallmark of governance “which is the provision of comfort, tranquillity and succour to the populace.
Balogun, former Lagos State Secretary of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), said that the party would be ready to relinquish the documents for Sanwo-Olu for study and implementation, if requested.
“We want to congratulate Sanwo-Olu for the opportunity that has been given to him to lead Lagos for another four years.
“Despite the fact the we have REBIRTH agenda that we promoted during the electioneering period which actually showed a lot of things wrong with this present day Lagos, our primary interest is the comfort of ordinary people.
“So, if the governor does not mind, he can actually visit some of those agendas of ours and some of the things we have proffered as solutions to the present problems of the state.
“We expected Sanwo-Olu to improve on so many things that have been done in the past and some of those specific areas that are disturbing the most for Lagos residents,” Balogun said.
He listed some of these areas to include insecurity, toutings, street urchins and criminal tendencies that were rampant in various nooks and crannies of Lagos state.
He noted that there was no way any administration could sustainably address the security issues in the state without looking at the recruitment centres for many of the criminals.
Balogun said: “For us, we believe the recruitment centre that is so fertile to produce as much as possible juveniles into criminalities is our school system.
“Today, Lagos State has one of the highest population of out-of-school children. A good attention and investment in education and vocational trainings can stem the tides that is becoming a danger to all.
“It is just a normal thing for us to have a commensurate increment in the number of classrooms and teachers as the population increases. As a result, we will not be having over-blouted classes which teachers will be unable to manage.
“If a teacher expected to manage 25 students now struggles to manage 100 learners in class, at the end of the days, we will be having a lot of truants that will not be noticed, and followed up.
“A lot will not concentrate and at the end the will be forming gangs and sent away from school to become a problem in the society. No education, not training and they become a problem to larger society to fend for themselves.
“So, the issue of security should be looked into and confronted with holistic agenda like education.”
According to him, as a student of the first executive governor of Lagos, late Alhaji Lateef Jakande, he had learnt that the hallmarks of government is to provide for the people comfort, succour and tranquility.
“So, wherever somebody is in government it is not to empower self or cronies, it is to provide comfort and succour for the people.
“That’s the difference between our government here and those of other place. It is the absence of comfort and succour that his causing brain drain and oversea mentality by our youths,” he said.
Balogun, however, called on stakeholders across party lines to join hands with the government as an individual or group in order to bring that comfort into reality for the people.
On transportation, Balogun, who urged the governor to invest in water transportation like Venice in Italy, said that the road transport had been over-laboured and over-stretched.
He said that the perennial traffic situation, that often time ground the state economy, could be conveniently solved with massive investment in waterways.
“For me, all the state government is doing on water transportation is window dressing, it has not really looked into the mode of transportation. We are supposed to have many standard ferries.
“There is no enough government support for those that are trying to open up the business of water transportation.
“To get a standard ferries is not an easy task, we know, the government support is needed to open up water ways and relieve road.
“When we eliminate recurrent boat mishaps, people will be interested in waterways and be disinterested in the road transport. People will move from road transport to water if we invest in it,” he said.
Balogun described most boat being used in the state as not good to transport human beings, but for fishing.
“God knows why, I had become the governor I would not progress with the idea of Fourth Mainland Bridge because it is very unnecessary if we invest in water transportation.
“The Third Mainland Bridge has not solve the problem of traffic, so the Fourth Mainland Bridge cannot do. Only water transportation can do.
“It is very unnecessary because we are going to wasting a huge resources on such white elephant project. The problem can easily be solved through our waterways,” Balogun said.
He said that if waterway was invested in, managed and functional, the state could generate huge income from it and make life more comfortable for residents and businesses.
“The state will be making money from it almost immediately unlike the bridge that will take many months and years to build like Lagos rail project,” he said.
On whether he would be ready to join Sanwo-Olu’s administration if called upon to serve, Balogun said that he would be supporting from afar.
“We will be ready to present our ideas but we would not come into their government,” he said.
Sanwo-Olu and his deputy, Dr Obafemi Hamzat, were on Monday sworn-in for second term at the Tafawa Balewa Square, Lagos.
