‘Much ado about Lagos debts’

In the last one hundred days, we completed the 6th, 7th and 8th draws of the Lagos HOMS housing initiative and this means that since March 2014, we have kept our promise to put 200 homes on the market for eligible residents and we have never failed to deliver.

I have searched across many jurisdictions and I have not yet come across any where a Government delivers 200 new homes every month.

In addition to road construction and rehabilitation, we are maintaining the bridges, whose expansion joints have not been changed for about 30 years, which the Federal Government built and left behind in Lagos, when the capital moved to Abuja.

Expansion joints are those metal sheets that connect segments of our bridges. When they are maintained, driving on bridges is a pleasant experience.

When maintenance is neglected, which requires periodic replacement, driving on bridges becomes a very jarring and unpleasant experience.

Those who use the Eko Bridge can share their daily experience and the wear and tear on their vehicles.

I promise you that all these will soon be a thing of the past.

We have awarded the contract to replace 33 joints from the Alaka end to the Apongbon end of the Eko Bridge.

The contract cost over N400 Million.

We have successfully replaced all the joints on the Alhaji Masha Bridge and commuters will tell you that their experience is better.

We are also surveying the Apapa Bridge to determine the cost and strategy to implement it with minimal discomfort to commuters.

In the last 100 days, apart from advertising vacancies for employment into the state Civil Service to recruit young people to replace retired ones, we have expanded our economic empowerment initiatives for residents who have struggled to put food on the table because most businesses they can undertake require electricity which is not yet available.

We have been inventive and therefore able to teach them new skills which require little, if any, electricity.

In the first phase, which kicked off in 10 Local Governments between 1st – 30th September, 11,862 people participated in training on soap making, tie & dye, bead and ear-ring making, pomade making and many others.

They have graduated and while we are arranging to supply them with basic tools for their trade, so that they can get on with their lives, we have commenced the second batch of training for 14,000 people.

But something happened during the training of the first batch which pleases me and which I like to share.

We suddenly needed to supply all the schools in our control, about 2,000, with soap and water.

I am happy to report that all the soap supplied to our schools before they re-opened, which was worth about N25 Million, was produced in Lagos by these trainees, largely women.

They started earning money even during training.

And this takes me to the health challenge that we faced during the last 100 days – the threat of Ebola.

It was a very challenging period. A virus with no known cure, with very devastating consequences.

In the 40 years since it was discovered, it has never affected an urban centre. All known cases were in rural places where there were not many people.

Ebola in Lagos, with a population of 21 million people, was a time bomb of epic proportion if it developed into an epidemic.