Bola Tinubu, the APC’s nominee for president, said that while serving as Lagos’ governor from 1999 to 2007, he transformed the city from a jungle to a megacity.
In a program that aired on Channels TV on Friday night, Tinubu said that he laid the framework for all subsequent governors of Lagos State to build upon in order to transform the state into what it is today.
“Lagos was a jungle when I took office as governor of Lagos State in 1999,” he claimed. It was an entirely primitive setting. There were garbage heaps everywhere, no roofs on the schools, no ambulances in the hospitals, and no oxygen tanks to save lives. It was in a terrible condition.
“The state started to take shape as we progressively put everything in place. The state’s obligations were taken and turned into assets as a result of what we performed.
“The Victoria Island neighborhoods from the Civic Center to the Oriental Hotel used to be trash dumps, but look at what the neighborhoods are like now. Only elderly people would remember all of these.
According to the mini-documentary on Tinubu, the APC presidential candidate redesigned the state’s revenue, and after he stepped down as governor in 2007, Lagos became totally independent from the federal government in terms of revenue generation after being entirely reliant on federal allocations before 1999.
At the time, the state’s monthly internal revenue was only N600m, and it was entirely reliant on the federal government.
“In 2007, when Tinubu left office, Lagos’ IGR was N7 billion per month. Babatunde Fashola expanded on that legacy to N15 billion each month. The documentary highlighted that this was made feasible by the short, medium, and long-term goals Tinubu set for the state in terms of generating income and wealth.
The president, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (ret. ), described Tinubu as a political strategist, which attracted him (Buhari) to Tinubu, in a brief excerpt from the mini documentary.
Asiwaju Bola Tinubu has distinguished himself as a political strategist, and his wealth of ideas is what drew Buhari to him. He is a genuine humanitarian who has made a significant contribution to Nigeria’s and Africa’s progress.
In the program, both the current governor of the state, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, and the former governor of the state, Babatunde Fashola, credited the APC presidential candidate for the majority of the projects that their administrations completed. They referred to Tinubu as the mastermind behind the state’s developments and said that the majority of them were born during his time, long before they were implemented.
