Destiny Of 20 Million Lagosians Outweighs Aspirations Of Tinubu – LP Guber Candidate

The Lagos State gubernatorial candidate of Labour Party, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivor, has said the destiny of 20 million Lagos residents is more important than the aspirations of the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, who is jostling to become president in 2023.

Rhodes-Vivor also noted that the state is bigger than the former governor of the state who is perceived to be the father of Lagos State politics, adding that the state has had great people dating back to four, five generations, and they were not bigger than the state.

The Labour Party gubernatorial candidate punctured the idea that it is to the credit of Tinubu that Lagos is now a modern state, explaining that in 1966, Lagos was listed as one of the best run cities in the world.

Speaking on Saturday in an interview on a radio station in Lagos, Gbadebo regretted that because of bad leadership the state in the last decade has been ranked as one of the worst liveable cities in the world.

The 2022 ranking of the world’s most liveable cities report by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the research and analysis arm of the Economist Group, which was released around June, ranked Lagos as the 171st of the 172 countries it ranked. Lagos with 32.2 per cent was ahead of only Syrian capital city, Damascus.

He said: “Lagos State is bigger than one man. Lagos State is bigger than one’s ambitions. We’ve had great men live in Lagos State, people that embody what excellence is, that go back to four, five generations, and Lagos has always been bigger than that.

“So for me, the destiny of 20 million Lagosians far outweighs the aspiration or hopes of anybody or whoever believes for the longest time that they are in control of Lagos State.

Most elections in Nigeria are characterized by low turnout of voters comparable to the number of registered voters. This Rhodes-Vivor said has changed because of the introduction of Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BIVAS) into the voting process by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as well as the genuine interest of the people to lead a revolution at the ballot.

“Actually, the most important thing we should realize is that less than 16 percent of people – registered voters, come out to determine who governs Lagos. So 84 percent of this people are sitting down at home with their voter cards. Out of that 16 percent, about 9-10 percent of the people vote for the APC. And that is because of significant voter suppression, voter intimidation and significant manipulation with INEC. This has changed in relation to BIVAS that has been introduced, in relation to number of people that have woken up to their responsibility as citizens, in relation to people that genuinely want to deliver a revolution at the ballot box,” he said.

According to Rhodes-Vivor, Lagosians are clamouring for good governance that will be accountable to them, noting that the people have suffered and now ready to change the status quo.

He said: “There might be no vacancy for the state capital they’ve created for themselves, but the people have suffered for it and the people are tired and want the breath of fresh air. The people themselves have determined that it’s no longer enough for mediocrity to continue to reign in Lagos State. It’s no longer for a tokenized governance, a situation where just before election, you start to see people rushing to do projects; you start to see a lot of tokenized outreach from the government as oppose to actually working to delivering excellence, which Lagos State was initially known for. And people have come to terms with and they want a new government that is accountable to them, not their own power hegemony as Lagos has currently been run for the last 23 years.”

Rhodes-Vivor promised to run a transparent government, adding that he will deliver four times what the current administration of the APC in the state is delivering.

He also pledged to ride the state of touts and engage young people in human capacity development programmes for the overall benefit of the state.

“We’re offering a government that’s going to be transparent and accountable; government that will open its book completely in terms of contracts that were given out, in terms of procurement that we’re doing. We’re going to be working to get the best deals for Lagosians, so that the small resources we’ve, we’ll be able to stretch it as much as we can for 20 plus million Lagosians that we currently have,” he said.