Meet the man who tamed Nigeria’s most lawless city – @TundeFashola profiled by UK’s @Telegraph

by Jewel Stephen

Governor of Lagos state, Babatunde Fashola has been profiled by UK news platform, ‘The Telegraph’, over his accomplishments in transforming Lagos and most recently, his leadership in the fight against the Ebola virus disease.

In a report by the Chief foreign correspondent, Colin Freeman, the Governor was hailed for “cleaning up its crime-ridden slums and declaring war on corrupt police and civil servants”.

Fashola was praised for his efforts in drastically reducing the spate of armed robberies in the state, and also for his work on the economy, where he significantly increased Lagos state’s tax revenues.

Below are excerpts from the report:

“Born into a prominent Muslim family but married to a Christian, Mr Fashola trained as a lawyer and went into politics after being appointed chief of staff by the previous Lagos governor, Asiwaju Tinubu, a powerful politician often described as Mr Fashola’s “Godfather”. But while he has long enjoyed the backing of a political “Big Man”, is his role as a rare defender of Nigeria’s “Little Men” that has won him most support.”

“He famously claims to be “just doing his job”. But in a land where politicians are known for doing anything but, that alone has been enough to make Babatunde Fashola, boss of the vast Nigerian city of Lagos, a very popular man. Confounding the image of Nigerian leaders as corrupt and incompetent, the 51-year-old governor has won near-celebrity status for transforming west Africa’s biggest city, cleaing up its crime-ridden slums and declaring war on corrupt police and civil servants.”

“Next month, he will come to London to meet business leaders and Mayor Boris Johnson’s officials, wooing investors with talk of how he has spent the last seven years building new transport hubs and gleaming business parks. Yet arguably his biggest achievement in office took place just last week, and was done without a bulldozer in sight. That was when his country was officially declared free of Ebola, which first spread to Nigeria three months ago when Patrick Sawyer, an infected Liberian diplomat, flew into Lagos airport.”

“Health officials had long feared that the outbreak, which has already claimed nearly 5,000 lives elsewhere in west Africa, would reach catastrophic proportions were it to spread through Lagos. One of the largest cities in the world, it is home to an estimated 17 million people, many of them living in sprawling shanty towns that would have become vast reservoirs for infection. To make matters worse, when the outbreak first happened, medics were on strike.”

“Instead, Mr Fashola turned a looming disaster into a public health and PR triumph. Breaking off from a trip overseas, he took personal charge of the operation to track down and quarantine nearly 1,000 people feared to have been infected since Mr Sawyer’s arrival. Last week, what would have been a formidably complex operation in any country came to a successful end, when the World Health Organisation announced that since Nigeria had had no new cases for six weeks, it was now officially rid of the virus.”

“For Mr Fashola’s many supporters, it is also yet more proof that the 51-year-old ex-lawyer is a future president in the making, a much-needed technocrat in a country dominated far too long by ageing “Big Men” and ex-generals. Once, while driving through Lagos in his convoy, he famously stopped an army colonel who was driving illegally in one of the governor’s newly-built bus lanes, berating him in front of television cameras.”

“Armed robberies – sometimes by moonlighting police – used to be so common that few people ventured out after dark. Foreign businessmen would routinely travel with armed escorts, and the few willing to live there would stay mainly in a heavily-guarded diplomatic area called Victoria Island, a rough equivalent to Baghdad’s Green Zone. Add to that the suffocating smog, widespread squalor and regular three-hour traffic jams, and it was no suprise that the city had a reputation as one of the worst places in the world to live.”

“Another big achievement has been increasing tax revenues, vital in a city where the GDP of $43 billion makes it the fifth-biggest economy in sub-Saharan Africa. Mr Fashola has tried to sweeten the pill by putting up signs on all new infrasructure projects, saying “paid for by your taxes”. It is a rare acknowledgement of gratitude in a country where a guaranteed stream of state oil wealth has historically allowed rulers to remain aloof from the ruled.”

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