BY STEVE OSUJ
POOR NIGERIAN GOVERNORS: Most Nigerian governors have performed below par since 1999. But some have been abysmal. Current Lagos State governor, Mr. Babajide Sanwoolu falls into the latter category: among of the poorest of the class. Sanwoolu’s output is particularly pathetic especially in the face of Lagos’ bounteous resources. But of course, Lagosians are not oblivious of his peculiar status.
EXPRESSO will publish a comprehensive Sanwoolu scorecard next year, but today, a certain magnificent complex called GIWA GARDENS Waterpark and Resorts is the telling metaphor we shall apply here as a signpost to the morass that is governance in Lagos state currently.
PARADISE IN THE JUNGLE: Nestled in the immediate outlay of the Atlantic Ocean in a place called Sangotedo, is GIWA GARDENS (GG),
Sangotedo which is a few minutes away from the Lagos Business School (LBS) on the Lekki-Epe Expressway.
Apart from the LBS and a Shoprite mall down the road, Sangotedo is a backward community hemmed between the Ocean and the highway.
But thereabouts in 2021, a plucky young man, Keji Giwa, chose to build GIWA Gardens Waterpark and Resort in Sangotedo. It turned out to be a magical facility that portends to turn poor Sangotedo into a fairyland. Well, almost.
Let’s call it an iconic paradise in an uncharted jungle of sandy mash and brackish sea water.
The project which sits on 14 acres of land is a magnificent themed waterpark and accommodation.
Telling his story to Thisday, the visioner, Keji Giwa, a Nigerian-British, noted that Lagosian who cannot readily visit Disneyland and Dubai, would find a wonderful alternative at Giwa Gardens, especially during festivities.
It has to be the best family getaway in Lagos at weekends and holiday periods, he enthused.
There’s no doubt that it is.
Eventually opened in December, 2023, it was a complete ticket sellout from the first day. The entire sleepy community came alive! Cars, crowds, colours and carnivals overwhelmed its Sangotedo locale. It was a joyful epiphany for the neighbourhood for nobody thought such latent energy was waiting to be switched on like electricity.
But after the December 2023 opening, there was a little mishap involving a fun-seeker and the Lagos State Government (LASG) was quick to move against the Waterpark and had its operations suspended for safety reviews.
LASG, A MOST ANTI-BUSINESS GOVERNMENT: But the story here is that the LASG and her officials had posed as stumbling blocks to the actualisation of this revolutionary project. Opening deadlines were missed a couple of times. There were of course multiple layers of charges and fees, often tending towards extortion, which of course, most developers in Lagos have to put up with.
But beyond the official rent-seeking antics, Giwa traversed Alausa umpteenth time to get the LASG’s attention to his epochal project. No dice.
Not even the most basic support like paving the streets and access ways to the park, channeling of water and possibly lighting the streets.
The result is that, barely two years after a boom opening, Giwa Gardens, the multi billion naira investment is becoming a DOA (Dead On Arrival) project. The ruinous investment climate in Lagos wouldn’t allow it to thrive.
All the access roads to GG are still unpaved, un-motorable and waterlogged. All the vicinity is dark at night, while the environmental architecture and aesthetics required for a facility like this, are absent.
Why would an investor embark on a hospitality and tourism project of this magnitude without sparing a thought for the environment, one might ask?
The obvious answer is that there’s a limit to what an investor can do in an environment that is stark and bereft of any iota of enablement. An environment where governments at all levels are disabling, extortionate and has a punitive attitude to investors.
This is an environment in which there’s no public power supply, no potable water, no paved roads, no water channels and no visible security system. It’s an environment that boasts of a total absence of government presence!
PROBABLY THE WORST GOVERNOR IN LAGOS STATE: We may also take liberty to say that there’s virtually no government in sight in Lagos currently.
A project of this nature, a Local Direct Investment (LDI) of this size which not only drives the economy of a community but creates thousands of direct and indirect jobs ought to be prioritised and supported by both the state and local governments.
But it’s a shame that the LASG never lifted a finger even as you read this. But the governments at all levels had collected all sorts of rents and anytime the facility is open, you can bet that state officials would slither in like serpents to make one demand or the other of the management.
This has become the stock in trade of the LASG and LGAs officials (same story all over Nigeria though).
Lagos government officials of today are wired to collect rent, extort and intimidate businesses and investors. They don’t think of value, they don’t understand sustainability! This is one reason Nigeria remains backwards.
LASG is particularly the worst of all states in Nigeria considering the opportunities that abound all around the state. If officials are tuned towards creating win-win values, Lagos would have grown ten fold more than it is today.
GG would have exploded into a behemoth of tourism, entertainment and hospitality powerhouse.
Sangotedo would have become a thriving community with hundreds of ancillary businesses springing up around GG.
WE NEVER HAD IT SO BAD: Previous governors from 1999, starting from Tinubu to Babatunde Fashola and Akinwummi Ambode were not only upfront in huge infrastructure development, they moved the LGAs and LCDAs to do a bit as well.
But today, all these lower tiers of government are all but moribund in terms of providing basic services to Lagosians. Hardly any work goes on anymore.
The streets, drainages and culverts around the vicinity of Giwa Gardens are actually things within the purview of ETI-OSA LCDA and not Alausa.
But it takes an awake governor to have picked up GG in its radar and made sure the needful was done for such a strategic infrastructure.
NOTHING GOING ON BUT THE RACKET: A cursory look around Lagos shows that the state government is practically on holidays especially in Sanwoolu’s second term.
For instance, Fashola and Ambode had an agency that fixed potholes and did quick interventions on roads. We don’t see that agency anymore. So one small pothole on Lekki-Epe road around phase one, for instance, would manifest for years and torment commuters for so long.
Fashola and Ambode collaborated with LGAs to fix/build hundreds of street and inner roads every year.
EXPRESSO here challenges LASG to publish the list of streets and inner roads it has fixed in the last two years so people living in those places may verify by themselves.
SUSPENDED ANIMATION IN LAGOS STATE: Discerning minds would have noticed that the Lagos State governor/government has been in a state of suspended animation since 2023, which marked the beginning of the second term of Governor Sanwoolu.
The LASG has been merely going through the motions of governance. Apart from the reconstruction of the Lekki-Epe Expressway which has been in the making for about four years and still ongoing, hardly any major project is taking place in Lagos state today.
The Federal Ministry of Works did a bit of rehabilitation work in Apapa, Ikoyi and Lagos Island areas, which have a semblance of Lagos working. But in the last two years, the state government seems to have been deliberately hamstrung.
THE ABUJA FACTOR: Lagos has been a state under the vice grips of a godfather since 2007. But the noose apparently tightened to a chokehold with the coming of Governor Babajide Sanwoolu in 2019.
When Bola Tinubu, the godfather and El supremo of Lagos became president of Nigeria, the Lagos situation became darker.
Governor Sanwoolu became fully and completely lame-ducked.
The world saw a bit of a sample during his recent face-off with the Speaker of the State House of Assembly. The man in Abuja trashed both the governor and the Office.
So right now, Lagos is in a state of suspended animation, perhaps until 2027 when a certain Seyi would be shooed in as the next governor. Otherwise, hardly anything is going on. It must be noted that Mr. Governor is a good natured gentle folk but bound to the stakes by a vicious Klepto-kakistocracy that is growing roots in Nigeria. (This Lagos model has recently been replicated in States like Kogi, Ebonyi and Rivers. It has become incumbent on the people to move to liberate their states from the hands of petit godfathers).
This may explain why a multitude of street urchins have been let loose on the highways of Lagos openly extorting transporters and making a grimy unsightliness in the so-called mega city.
There’s also a young man going about with bulldozers (as if they were toys) happily targeting ‘enemy’ businesses to pull down. He seems to be on special mission to harm non-indigenes, especially Igbo businesses in Lagos, and the commissioner seems to make a sport of doing this especial dirty assignment.
Lagos has the worst environmental situation amongst global cities and successive officials put in charge of this delicate assignment hardly understand the call.
For instance, the city state is traversed by canals yet over the years, the government has not been able to master these channels by investing in them and creating proper throughput for free flow of water. Where are the canals with the right gradients, concrete embankments, fortifications and demarcation walling. But Very little intellectual attention has been paid to Lagos’ environment since 1999.
It explains why the behemoth smells. It explains why most parts are perpetually flooded with the slightest of rain. It explains why the city is not green, but instead, has the face of an open sewer…
Nobody is thinking about it. One therefore shudders at the obduracy of government officials gayly going about the city looking for built up structures to pull down. Imagine invading a shopping complex and pulling down 19 multi-story malls (worth about N10 billion) under the guise that they are obstructing a canal!
Meanwhile canals are not de-silted in years.
IN SUMMARY: The bottom line is that Lagos has been vastly set back in the last six years having been shorn of perspicacious leadership. Consider the loss of new age infrastructure like the damaged Landmark beach resort and now, Giwa Gardens Waterpark.
And things look to get worse if the current place-holder is replaced by the first son. Lagos would regress further, becoming a fiefdom of rent collectors and carpetbaggers.
The auguries are indeed very dim for Lagos in terms of political succession, intellectual flair to drive a forward looking, eco-friendly and innovative global mega city. Who’s thinking here?
