Why I want to succeed Fashola –Ikuforiji November 2, 2014 Few hours after formally joining the governorship race last week, the Speaker of the Lagos State of Assembly, Adeyemi Ikuforiji, met with journalists, where he outlined his vision for the state, the challenges ahead and why he feels he is in the best position to take over from Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola. Senior Reporter, AKINWUNMI KING, was there. Excerpts: Why do you think you are qualified to be Babatubde Fashola’s successor? Today, in Lagos, I am not only eminently qualified, but I think I am more passionate about the development of the state and its people than anyone else that I know of. People just come out, they just think, look because Babatunde Fashola was Chief of Staff and he became governor and he became celebrated. Then every Tom, Dick and Harry can be governor. You even hear of people, some jobless ones, going to collect governorship nomination form as if the seat of the governor of Lagos is the same thing as the chairmanship of rural local government somewhere. I think a little bit of seriousness needs to be brought into this whole thing. Well, those who have followed events in Lagos in the last few years would agree with me that the seriousness that we brought into the administration, I mean the leadership of the House, the Legislature in Lagos is unprecedented in this country. And this was made possible through the grace of God, but also with the fact that before I became speaker, I knew what I wanted for the House. What I wanted to do with that position was very clear in my mind and from day one, I set about the business of achieving that. Today, my mind is very, very clear about what needs to be done to make Lagos a most livable city anywhere comparable to any other city in Africa and in the world. We are blessed and I know it and I can speak from position of relative advantage. I have been the speaker of the House, I have passed budgets, more than nine budgets for this state; I mean annual budget and many supplementary ones. I have an idea of the resources that are at the disposal of this state and I know where the shoe pinches. I have very, very clear ideas of how to take care of the pains of common Lagosians. There are many ways of looking at it. Yes, if you go through my speech, you will want to ask questions where will you get the money? Where will you do this, where will you do that? One thing is very clear to me, Tinubu started from N600 million monthly Internally Generated Revenue (IGR). By the time he was leaving eight years after, it was over N8 billion. He laid the foundation for it to even rise higher and of course the actualiser came to actualise the dream that was on ground. As of today, we are in the range of 20s. I know if you say we are around 30s, you may not be far away from it. I tell you, with about N30 billion a month, and with all that has happened so far, with the necessary right exposure, which, of course, I have even in excess, we can leverage on that. We can do even a lot more. The opportunities are there. I know we can modernise the infrastructure for this state than we have done so far. I know we can be creative about job creation and the more people we get out of the unemployment bracket, the higher the IGR will be. We are sitting on the gold mine that is totally untapped now! Tourism and all we need to really tap into that is energy and security. If Lagos takes care of its energy needs and we can look into the area of security, then the dream will be attained. Immediately those two are in place, it will be so easy to tap into the God-given tourism barrels, that is billions of barrels of touristic oil around us here. Go to Ibeju-Lekki, go towards Epe, see the number of Islands that you can easily make things work. Dubai is a small place; Dubai is a desert and look at what they have done for themselves. We don’t need to spend as much to make ours No.1 spot for tourism in the continent. We are naturally endowed with regards to the position of Lagos on the map. If you look at the map of the continent and see where Lagos is, you will just know that so far, we have done nothing as far as tapping into our natural resources. I am not talking of oil, I am not talking of other mineral resources but the fact that we are in a position to be a hub of the African economy. Lagos can serve in that position for Africa. People who are coming from Brazil, from Argentina, from US, from Europe going to any part Africa, Lagos could be their first port of call if we decide to make it so and we can do this within a short period. If election is conducted tomorrow, what are your chances? Concerning my chances, there is no doubt that I will win on a landslide if primary election is conducted today in the APC. I am very sure that most of our party men are very interested in seen Lagos governed by a man who understands party politics and who is passionate about the development of Lagos and its people. They know that as at today, there is nobody that can complete favourably against Ikuforiji as far as that is concerned. Honestly, I am a lucky man. From my very humble background, I have been able to break shackles and chains of poverty. I have liberated myself and I know the journey has been relatively tough, but with God, everything had been made possible. What are the things that are wrong with the system propelling you to contest the Lagos governorship seat? I am not someone who easily gets satisfied with modest performance. I know that with the resources available to us in Lagos, we can make life more abundant for the ordinary man in the state. We can make our little Lagos compete favourably with most of those cities that we travel to, that we run to for holidays, that we send our children to for education and for exposure. I want to assure you that within 18 months after I am elected and I assume office on May 29, 2015, you will ask yourself again, what was amiss before now. There are many things we have left undone. I am a product of public school, but how many of us are really happy to send our children to a public primary school today? I want everyone here to be jostling to get their wards to Lagos State public schools even within the next three years and it can be done. There are speculations that one of the governorship aspirant, Akinwumi Ambode, has been endorsed by the leader of the party. What is your take on this? Ambode was just a civil servant here yesterday. When did he join the party? When? Who will impose Ambode? You can’t impose Ambode. There are many reasons Ambode cannot be imposed and when we get to the river, we know how to cross it. On the issue of imposition or no imposition, let me be very clear about it. A lot of rumours are going the rounds, and each and every candidate had been tagged with the support of one leader or the other except Ikuforiji. But, a year and a half ago, someone told me one of the aspirants already had the nod of the leaders; they said he was the one Asiwaju Bola Tinubu wanted to use. I pushed them aside because I knew it was a rumour and it was not possible. After about 10 weeks or so, that particular name disappeared from the scene. Another one came up and after about two months again, that one also disappeared, yet another came up. I can assure you that some of the names that came up of recent cannot even go even to Bourdillion to face Asiwaju and say they want to run. Yet, they tell people that Asiwaju has asked them to get prepared for the job. Do you tell people to get prepared with the words of mouth? You don’t get prepared for the job of governor of Lagos in just a few days. We should just leave some of these stories for what they are. To me, they don’t exist. Look, the party is not a party of tyrants. I have made my intention known on Sunday and I am happy about it. You can see the crowd there, they are not rented crowd. I did not give a dime to anybody to come to that session there. So, that somebody is imposed, please forget it. If somebody is imposed, we did not need to pick the nomination form. In Lagos APC, two personalities are crucial in picking who becomes governorship candidate of the party; Governor Babatunde Fashola and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. What is your relationship with the two and are they in support of your ambition? I am sure everybody knows that I have very close relationship with the two of them. The same way some of the aspirants have. Well, I wouldn’t know of other aspirants. I mean, I know of myself. In fact, Governor Fashola, while in Dubai, called me and after he landed today, he called me again. It is this meeting with you that stopped me from meeting with the governor. Are they aware of your ambition? They are very much in the know. Are they in support? Well, you should understand one thing; they are leaders of the party and they should not be seen to have given total support to any of the aspirants till the time is ripe to do so. So, I will not be able to answer right now that particular question. I have gone through your 10-point agenda, but my worry is that none of the programmes is new entirely. How do we intend to move forward if these are what we keep treating year in year out? Well, let’s ask ourselves the question, have these issues been treated? Have they been treated and treated to your satisfactions. They have not been treated to my satisfactions and I want to treat them to my satisfactions. I believe that job creation, poverty alleviation have not even been touched and if any government had really touched those in the last 15 or 16 years in this country, you should name the government. But you have been in government in the last few years and you passed several budgets… I think we should not go into those things because I am as guilty as you are guilty. I am quality and you are very guilty too. What is the process of selecting delegates to the APC primaries? I think the way things are, the party started with direct primaries, then some few weeks ago, we learnt of modified direct primaries. Now the emergency convention of the party is coming up, we are expecting some changes to some of those things. So until we see those changes, but whether direct or indirect, I know that no matter the number of aspirants, I will win the APC ticket for the governorship of Lagos. In the event, it goes the other way round, what do you do? Well, I am a politician and I am not that politician that sees a particular office as a do-or-die. Let me give you an insight into the type of person I am. In 2003, I came from the United States to contest the general election and my ambition was to be the speaker of the House of Assembly. For a full year or more, I nursed that ambition and I kept praying over it and by the time we had the general election, I won on a landslide. Right from that day, I started the campaign to be speaker. I moved round all members. But along the line, I was made to understand that the leadership of the party had shown interest in a particular person. My campaign was vigorous and look there were 17 returning members then. Out of the 17, I had 12 on my side, the other person had four and one person was on the line. But when we got to a point and I saw that we could run into trouble if we were not careful, the two of us will lose because we just heard the leadership saying let them go to the floor of the House. The other person was my brother from Epe; I was from Epe Constituency I, he was from Epe Constituency II and we know that 17 of the returning members didn’t want a greenhorn to come and be their speaker if not for the fact that the leadership said they are zoning it to Epe. So on May 31, two days before inauguration, we were in a meeting where the leadership said we had zoned these positions and they even gave names of members who would occupy those seats except the one for the office of speaker. They said they will leave us to decide who the speaker will be. You know what I did? I didn’t want Epe to lose the speakership. I went to the bathroom, I wept profusely and then returned to my colleagues and they said let’s vote and I said no, we don’t want to vote. The leadership of the party already told us that the speakership position is zoned to Epe and I want to thank members of the House for accepting that decision of the leadership. So, they were disarmed. Now I said those of us from Epe we have already gone home, we have consulted with our leaders and elders and the issue had been settled. So, I conceded to Pelumi. That was how we settled it. But since God knows my heart, and since it was predetermined that I will be speaker, by December 2005, when I least expected it, Pelumi was removed and I became speaker till today. And since then, Nigeria had witnessed a speakership like no other in the history of the nation. So really, it is not a do-or-die. I only have the burning desire of leading this state because of what I know and believe I can bring into it. How have you been able to escape the banana peel as the longest serving speaker in Nigeria? It’s very simple. Number one thing, you need the grace of God. You also really need to be selfless. You need to know your onion better than anybody else. Look, you must put others before yourself. You know the Lord says love your neighbours as thyself, but in this game, you must love your neighbour more than thyself, because in the legislature, the spirit of parliament is such a tough one. If you have N100,000, it must go round the 40 lawmakers. What do you have to say on zoning? Asiwaju came from this zone, from this my constituency, Ikeja and Fashola is from Surulere, that is west and central senatorial districts respectively. Lagos East has been producing speaker since 1999. I started the fight for zoning. In fact, it was in Ikorodu at one of the meetings that I said look, that we have held the legs and everything of the lion for our party to enjoy because when you keep the House, I mean the Legislature in order, then government can run smoothly. The East has done that since 1999, it is time for them to allow the East to be the one with the spoon to dish the food to others. And of course, I told Asiwaju also when we were discussing about some of these things. So, don’t make a mistake when people started saying it is Epe’s turn. They were not talking of East again, they are mentioning specifically Epe. Do you know why they were saying it is Epe’s turn? It’s because they know you have loyal and capable son in Epe. It is not all these new found sons, but the one they knew, that is the speaker of the House. That is why people are saying it is Epe’s turn. It is not just anybody now or people who have no shame. They have even said it that after this one no more zoning; but, of co
Posted on: Sun, 02 Nov 2014 00:19:19 +0000
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