BRF on the global stage at 50
On June 18, 2011 at the truly avante-garde agglomeration of steel and imagination called the Forte de Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, standing shoulder to shoulder with, or more exactly a shoulder ahead of, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was Babatunde Raji Fashola, bearing aloft the flag of mega-city managers who had responsibility for the day-to-day challenge of teeming populations and had gone to Rio to lend an important voice to the global challenge of climate change.
Twenty-four hours earlier, he had participated in a panel discussion on “social housing and slums upgrading”. Vintage BRF, he gave a good account of what’s being done back home and more. However, he also argued forthrightly that while it was desirable to continue to establish parameters for upgrading of blighted areas and building houses in the urban centres and elsewhere, without promoting population control and making the rural areas bearable, it would all come to naught. The 70-something-year-old woman listening with rapt attention beside me said BRF’s contribution was easily the most profound at the panel discussion and certainly the inconvenient truth which his state, the nation and indeed the global human community would do well to listen to.
Starting from the state, while BRF has arguably pursued the construction, renovation and rehabilitation of general infrastructure and even breathtaking road projects, he would tell you that the state cannot build its way out of congestion, which in itself is not a signal to lack of development but a sign of prosperity, as no one would contemplate going to live in a desert. The practical thing to do was to manage the road assets as efficiently as possible by not getting on it, if possible, by using alternative means; not insisting on driving that eight-foot-long container right up to our doorsteps in our residential areas instead of using the appropriate warehouses and taking ownership of that road rather than engage in those things that damage the road.
In the all-important housing sector, BRF would argue that houses for the poor would never be achieved and corruption would continue to thrive for as long as people are expected to pay cash for homes like buying yams in the market. He would tell you that he would any day stand for affordable quality housing for the low-income earners. The Lagos Home Ownership Mortgage Scheme (Lagos HOMS) and the current aggressive construction of housing units to address the all-important supply side, he said, indicates a well thought-out solution to a seemingly intractable problem. From education to health, agriculture, power and transportation, the discerning would discover a deep planning ability even while aggressively taking forward the regeneration agenda towards achieving the model mega-city dream.
At the national level, BRF has consistently lent his substantial voice to national causes with his overarching vision being the need to have a prosperous city state within a healthy, peaceful nation, and not Lagos – the island of development as it currently stands.
However, BRF will also be the first to speak against the current inequitable federal arrangement: where the national government retains a huge chunk of the revenues but already shedding the luggage for which the resources were meant through privatisation; where the current constitutional arrangement still saddles the centre with responsibilities that could efficiently get delivered by the states or local councils if duly empowered including distribution of books to schools; where VAT is shared without consideration for derivation like oil and even among states that had legislated among some of the revenue heads in VAT; where power sector privatisation remains inconclusive; and where a state like Lagos bears the brunt of oil and general goods haulage from the nation’s ports with no special provision or accruable revenue to maintain overstretched infrastructure, among others.
BRF’s views are well reported in all these areas but whether the institutions of government at the federal level that should act to make a difference in a highly politicised milieu would do so remains another kettle of fish altogether.
On the international stage from which we started, BRF has maintained a consistently rising profile as the bright spot in a continent often in the news for the wrong reasons, first and foremost, on account of solid achievements back at home. It is not unusual to get people, including senior media personalities, recounting how they had visited one foreign country or the other and the names Fashola and Lagos come up with admiration and commendation. But beyond this, BRF himself has commanded a compelling attention as he makes the important ones among the international invitations that regularly come his way. Whether speaking to highly discerning audience and students at Cambridge, Harvard, Oxford or the London School of Economics or participating in committees of international organisations like the WHO in Japan, BRF speaks with candour, brilliance and clarity of thought that cannot be missed.
From addressing investors on the immense investment opportunities back home, having taken the lead in plunging into massive infrastructural development with state resources, to joining other city managers to address global concerns, Governor Fashola at the John Hopkins University in United States recently stated a major sublime inspiration for his international engagements. “Speaking to young people, especially in universities has become for me a passion,” he said. “I feel that I am using the privileges of my office in a positive way to connect young people to the future they have to deal with in a way better than I connect to that world.”
Indeed, it is perhaps the concern for the future that has ignited BRF’s passion about the need for a new international legal order that would take cognisance of developments not envisaged when leaders then came up with treaties dealing with the international law on non-aggression and intervention. According to him, such laws perhaps never envisaged that leaders would turn against their own people with genocidal ferociousness as being witnessed in many parts of the world. BRF would also want other germane issues addressed. For example, with seamless transactions taking place across the global human community, what rules guide payment of duties and other transactional spin-offs? Why is it impossible for multi-national corporations to observe the same ethical and environmental standards in their dealings with the developing world as they do in their home countries? Generally, BRF would often wonder why Nigerians would readily obey the law, rules and regulations in foreign climes but would rather observe law and order in the breach in their own country while turning round to praise those foreign jurisdictions for the order therein.
While ever so humble and modest about the accolades that usually follow his well-delivered presentations, most times delivered ex tempore, attributing the successes of the administration to the public servants, his team members, and most importantly the people of Lagos who cooperate with his administration to change what they do not accept, Governor Fashola would also take the “hard issues”, including the oft-repeated question on corruption, with incisive clarity. He would preface his remarks by stating his abhorrence for corruption but would admonish against the common haste to use the acts of a few to tar the majority of Nigerians who are honest and hardworking.
But even more instructive is his broadening of the scope of the corruption issue to include the oft-overlooked “small” crimes like driving against traffic, beating traffic light, to the far more grievous forms of corruption like election malpractices. He would mince no words in calling for appropriate sanctions for all forms of corruption duly investigated and tried.
On the home front, there are equally the “hard nuts”. Indeed, a hard-working State House correspondent recently approached me on the need to do a joint book project which he called the “tough spots” of the Fashola administration noting that it would be nice to set the records straight or put in proper perspective issues like the clean-up of notorious spots like Oshodi and regeneration of blighted areas like Ijora-Badia and the Lekki-Epe Expressway concession, among others. While it would be needless to offer a defence here, it should suffice to make one or two general statements.
First, no serious investor, either local or international, will take seriously any government that does not honour agreements. Catching up with an infrastructural deficit of about 30 years would require the mobilisation of every available legal resource, including private sector partnerships. And for an administration that held out its integrity as its major collateral from the outset, the benefit of doubt ought to be given it that only the best interest of the state and its citizenry would be pursued at all times.
Second is the oft-stated fact that governing a mega-city of over 20 million people with diverse dispositions and backgrounds is neither a tea party nor a walk in the park, and if the key element of good leadership is the ability to listen and act when superior arguments are provided about why a policy of government should be reviewed, then BRF is on the right track. However, somewhat unfair has been the misrepresentation in some quarters about BRF being the “unyielding hard man” whose administration has been tough on the “poor”. “Aloof” was the word once used by a newspaper editor/columnist who has never interacted closely with BRF and who would not want to meet with him either one-on-one or along with other editors simply because of “what people might say”.
But “aloofness” would definitely not be the word for a man who himself had gone through the crucibles of life and who would constantly remind his colleagues and team members that they are birds of passage who would tomorrow be haunted by their actions or inactions on quality infrastructure and institutionalised service machinery. But even the most incurable cynic would not but be touched by his response to the pointed question, once during an interview with Angela Ajetunmobi, on the perception that he was hard. His down to earth response: “I am sorry if I come across that way. I have seen it all, I have been ejected from a room with my mum. I know how it feels.”
As one begins to round off this, perhaps it won’t be out of place to ask BRF, the Surulere boy, to tell his story as an inspiration to millions of his admirers, especially the youths and the children. BRF had often implored his brother and mentor, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to do the same too. Without prejudice to various studies on his achievements and book researches going on, it would be a most befitting mid-life autobiography.
The poet and respected literary scholar Odia Ofeimun it was who once told me in relation to the revered statesman, Obafemi Awolowo, that “when a man tells you where he is going and how he will get there, then it becomes easy to ambush him”. Perhaps, by sheer divine providence and constant focus on the ball, it has not been possible to “ambush” this Surulere boy on the world stage at 50 whose admirers include the British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who wanted to know how the astute manager galvanised the mega-city’s IGR and keeps it clean. It’s in order to say ‘Happy Birthday’ to my boss at 50, but as he would often tell his team members, there is still much work to do ahead.
Bello is Special Adviser on Media to the Lagos State Governor.
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