Ambode’s cabinet and great expectations

Like the Federal Government and some other All Progressives Congress (APC)-controlled states, Ambode Akinwunmi has been running a government in Lagos State without commissioners and aides, six months after he won in an election to become governor of the state.

When a few days ago news filtered into the air that Ambode had selected a team of 37 men and women and sent same to the State House of Assembly for screening and confirmation as commissioners and assistants, that action was greeted with not just a big sigh of relief, but also great expectations.

We share in this relief and have also joined in nurturing the expectation that when the state assembly is through with its work, which we pray should be done with dispatch, the lucky men and women, who we hope have been called to serve, would hit the ground running.

Great expectations, almost always, have direct correlation with unsatisfactory social conditions where people are deprived, psychologically alienated and forced into low quality of life as amply celebrated by Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations which mirrors the English society of his time.

Since late last year when the immediate past government in Lagos started winding down up to this moment, it has not been easy for many residents of Lagos, especially those who have the misfortune of living in the suburbs of the city state, where life is miserable and difficult with terrible roads infrastructure and suffocating environment.

We have no reason or justification, however, to crucify Ambode for all of these because he is only one man, but now that he is setting up his cabinet, we can at least expect that, through his commissioner for works, he should begin to take a critical look at those parts of the state where people live in sub-human conditions, finding it extremely difficult to come to the city centres due to bad roads.

It is pertinent for us to recall that when in 2005 the Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration in the state, in defiance of the constitution, created 37 local council development authorities (LCDAs), the explanation was that the state government wanted to bring development to the local communities. The Lagos LCDAs have existed for over a decade now but Lagosians are still waiting to see grassroots development despite the menace of the agents of these local councils who come in various forms as collectors of rates, levies, taxes, rents, permits, etc. and give back nothing in return.

It is noteworthy, nonetheless, that previous administrations in the city state, especially the immediate past one under the highly cerebral Babatunde Fashola, did a lot in terms of infrastructure upgrade and environmental transformation, but that massive effort was concentrated at the city centres.

That effort, it seemed, was to serve the highbrow neighbourhoods of the city where the ‘big guys’ live and do their business such that it was tempting to believe that, in the calculation of the government, Lagos only consisted of Ikoyi, Victoria Island, Ikeja, Surulere, Yaba and just a few other locations.

Our expectation and, indeed, that of other Lagosians is that since those in the ‘big places’ have been ‘served’, Ambode and his team should now beam searchlight on places like Amukoko, Ladipo, Ejegemo, Okokomaiko, Ikotun, Ebute Metta, Ejigbo, Okota, Apapa, etc where people are weeping, living and dying over years of neglect by a government that enjoys privileges but sheiks its obligations to them.

The Lagos-Badagry Expressway is one project, we expect, that should be of utmost concern to the Ambode administration given its strategic importance to the growth of the state economy and, more importantly, for the excruciating pain people living on that axis bear on daily basis. Apart from the daily gridlock that keeps commuters on the road perpetually for a journey that should not be up to an hour, many of those commuters have lost valuable personally effects, got beaten, bruised and maimed by armed robbers who attack them every night on that road.

We recall that when Ambode won the governorship elections on the platform of APC, the victory was greeted with uncommon euphoria, not necessarily because he defeated the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, but mainly because, for the first time since the return of democracy, the state is to be ruled by a political party which also forms the government at the centre. The thinking was that the years of cat-and-dog fight between the state and the federal government arising from political differences were over with the hope that there would be synergy of purpose between the federal and the state government that would translate to more developments in the state.

We, therefore, expect Ambode to leverage this synergy to hasten work on Lagos-Badagry Expressway and also bring sanity to Apapa by not only rehabilitating all the roads and bridges leading to the ports which are in terrible, life-threatening conditions, but also by building a parking bay for the trucks that rendered those routes impassable.