by Gbenga Olorunpomi

Lagos State is very credit-worthy and has the many projects it is involved with as evidence of proper use. We can’t say the same of the PDP-led federal government. Not for my money, anyway.

Trust is such a big thing. It is only sensible that you only put your trust in someone who has hitherto demonstrated the ability to deliver on promises and meets your expectations.

Yes, it is pretty easy to lose that trust when results begin to flatter, but consistency has a sure way of reinforcing trust. And, for my money, if there is anything the Lagos State Government, under the leadership of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), has demonstrated since 1999, it has been its consistency.

I moved to Lagos in 2009. The tales of the lawlessness in the city was enough to put off an unschooled northern Nigerian kid like me but I was fascinated with the difference in the style of governance the Babatunde Fashola administration was demonstrating and I just knew my time in Lagos would be interesting. I personally witnessed the clearing of Oshodi. I was present at the demolition of the illegal structures on the Yaba-Agege rail line and the launch of the train service in the state. I saw the immediate effects of KAI and LASTMA and the rare demonstration of discipline by Lagosians as they queued for BRT buses. I almost believed the old Lagos I had imagined never existed. Maybe I was lucky, some tell me. But, if you have been following the numbers, you’d ask, “What’s luck got to do with it?”

Under the administration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, amazing work was done to shore up the purse of the state and make it financially stable. According to reports, the governor and his team of committed technocrats and advisers raised the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) from N600 million in 1999 to about 9 billion naira in 2007.

His successor, Babatunde Fashola, took over the baton and has increased this figure to between 18 billion to 23 billion. In fact, it was based on these figures that the governor boasted during the recent Taxation Stakeholders Conference that his state was the only one of the 36 that could survive without oil money. “If they shut down on oil, this is the only state that can survive. Everything that we have done in the past six years was funded by our taxes,” he said.

Numbers don’t lie, is what my old teacher used to say; and this is clear for Lagos State. All the infrastructures it has put in place have either come directly from its till or loans backed by the clear plans the state has to ensure it can pay these loans back.

Now to the issue of debts. As with any government or business, money is the language. Therefore, for the work of state to continue and the government continue to deliver on its promises, there has been the need to borrow money from time to time. To drive home the point, Fashola said: “IGR will only give us about N300 billion. From the demand we got from various communities for roads and other infrastructure, what we saw when we quantified it was about N750 billion, but we couldn’t generate N750 billion. That’s why we scaled down the budget to N495billion, over and above what we can reasonably pursue.”

For a state that can easily raise N300 billion yearly, it stands to reason that properly negotiated loan deals are not what we ought to be talking about, but the implementation of the projects they were meant for. If the ruling PDP at the centre has a problem with the fact that the state is borrowing, they should be asked, “Why is the federal government borrowing too? What has been done with the trillions borrowed? What are the plans of Mr. President to pay back?”

Lagos State is very credit-worthy and has the many projects it is involved with as evidence of proper use. We can’t say the same of the PDP-led federal government. Not for my money, anyway.

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Gbenga Olorunpomi is a senior digital marketing strategist. He has over 5 years in the marketing communications business and has designed social media strategies for major brands like Coca-Cola and The Economist.  He is experienced in the media, having worked for two years at one of the country’s biggest public relations firms as Media Relations and Content Manager. Gbenga is a Principal Consultant with Cyborg Nigeria. He is affiliated to the ACN. He tweets from @gbengagold

 

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