Ambode’s tipping point (II)

For the next five months, many of the governors will continue to lament like Jeremiah. Then, the day of accountability will come. It will be May 29, 2016 – exactly one year after they were voted into the office with a mandate to change things.

In Lagos, performance pressure and personality pride have been the reason for the success of its democratic leaders.

Those factors also separate Lagos from the small and rural states in the country, where a governor can get busy visiting “mama put” and leading okada riders’ procession all round the year.

In 1979, as an accomplished professional journalist, Lateef Jakande, came to power with a sense of pride in his accomplishments during his private life and the pressure to perform as an elected governor of Lagos State under the liberal Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN).

Shortage of housing for low-income earners in Lagos in particular gave him the inspiration to build several apartments to cater for the need of Lagosians. The apartments known and called Jakande estates nowadays have endured among many of his accomplishments in education. The Lagos State University was established by Jakande and the Lagos metroline started with him.

By 1999, Lagos had grown in leaps and bounds and the challenge of indiscriminate refuse dump was only waiting for a man who prided himself in active participation in civil rights movement as a pro-democracy activist, when it was too dangerous to do so.

In short, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu had the pressure to reduce the mountain of indiscriminate refuse dump that had reached epidemic proportions in the city of Lagos during the time he was elected as the governor of Lagos State. He did with his might among several foundation stones he laid for the future of Lagos.

Then entered a lawyer, who was relatively known in political circuit, Babatunde Fashola, with the pride of a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), and having served as a Chief-of-staff—an elevated position among members of any government cabinet.

Fashola faced the performance pressure of reclaiming Lagos from the abyss. His success will later make him the poster boy for his political party (All Progressives Congress).

But none of the Lagos leaders before this government had the kind of performance pressure faced by the incumbent. Ambode, a former civil servant whose pride is in his success as a former accountant general with a brilliant civil service career of 27 years has more pressure to succeed.

On one hand, Ambode is not an opposition governor like his predecessors and on the other hand, he’s a first term governor. But much more, the quality he possessed as a tipping point leader is what distinguishes Ambode from his predecessors.

In his first three months, he faced a wear and tear household war from his own “brother” that unsettled his administration. Having been shunted into a dead-end position due to a mixture of media war and filth columnist campaign, Ambode knew his strategy must become a movement.

Thanks to this savvy politicking, Ambode has cleverly turned the face of Lagosians to what matters: security and investments. He’s concentrating his resources both human and financial on what really matters, by mobilising the commitment of influencers within his administration and importing others like the ex-FIRS boss, Ifueko Omoigui-Okauru, and he’s succeeding in silencing the most vocal naysayers.

With a secure metropolis, business will boom and a peasant can move up the ladder just as those in the middle-class can see the statistics change for them too. Of course, the N250 billion employment trust fund he initiated a few days ago will amplify start-ups to trigger the needed change in youth unemployment just as scared investors will find courage to test the waters as chaos gives way to chance (opportunities) in Lagos.

Ambode’s game plan is this: concentrate resources where there’s need and the likely payoffs are greatest.  While his colleagues are lobbying hard to get bailout fund to pay salaries, he’s rallying Lagosians behind him on the idea of a safer city, where people will no longer be afraid and business, investment and tourism can flourish.

From Lagos recent past, I can only come to one conclusion that Ambode’s predecessor appeared to have treated inner city crimes and youth unemployment as secondary in importance, partly because he assumed building road infrastructure in affluent neighbourhoods and a few ones in low-income communities was the top priority.  So the balloon was only waiting to burst, otherwise criminals shouldn’t have overran Lagos the way they did in the first few weeks Ambode resumed in the office.

But the unusual courage with which Ambode responded to the crisis is a lesson to be learned by other state governors and leaders dealing with crisis situation either in private business or public service.

And this, Ambode is mulling the idea of a 24-hour economy in Lagos. I’ve always said it that as a nation we don’t utilise our day for rapid economic progress that can put us where we should be in the global economic graph. While offices and companies are opened at night in big cities around the world, we go to sleep here.

For those who think the idea of a 24-hour economy in Lagos is a tall dream, I won’t take you to London, Shanghai or New York City, I will say check out Maryland and Ojuelegba in the dead of the night and you’ll be convinced. At those terminals, you cannot be stranded, if you’re looking for a cab at 2.am, except there’s no money in your pocket.

I also know that the Mobil filling station at Maryland does 24-hour service, until recently. So with his idea to make Lagos a city of light, CCTV cameras and 24 hour bus rapid transit, Ambode is engaging a critical mass of people and converting them to rally behind a new idea that will spread like an epidemic. That’s his tipping point leadership.

But how Ambode brings this leadership quality to bear on the turnaround he seeks to achieve with the reform of Lagos State University— a university that is like Abiku, a Yoruba name for the spirit child who dies before reaching puberty but remains with the family during each birth cycle, because he/she has defied all the concoction made by herbalist to keep him/her out of the family—will be important to the legacy he leaves behind. So that Ambode is like a sprinter these days is understandable. It’s all about Performance pressure and personal pride, common with Lagos leaders.

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