Honourable Kehinde Bamigbetan is the
Special Adviser to Lagos State Governor on Communities and Communications. The
amiable politician is the former Chairman of Ejigbo Local Council Development
Area. In this interview with Prestige International Magazine, he opens up on
various issues including various activities of his office and developmental
projects of Governor Akinwunmi Ambode. Excerpts.
What is
the experience like as Special Adviser to the Governor on Communities and
Communications?
It’s been quite interesting. When
you get to an office where you are expected to conceptualize what the framework
of the office is all about and to make very visible impact, it can be quite
challenging but the first thing is to identify what are the areas of strength
you want to pursue and how you can empower communities in Lagos State. Luckily,
we have a Governor who has articulated a policy of inclusive governance which
emphasizes the development of policies and implementation of policies.
Let’s
talk on some of the ways this administration is touching lives of people in the
communities and grassroot?
Governor Akinwumi Ambode carries
with him an encyclopedic knowledge of Lagos of over 35 years in service. The
most glaring example is the 114 road projects that are going on simultaneously.
It’s one concrete evidence that there is a paradigm shift in the perspective of
government towards people and also the Governor has announced that he is
interested in an inclusive government. A government that is not only about the
center but also about the peripheries. Even in the way we do our town hall
meetings, we’ve been taken round towns. We have even held an executive council
meeting in Badagry to demystify the fact that governance is all about being at
the centre. We have engaged communities. The creation of the office of
Communities and Communications is evidence that the government is ready to move
to the grassroots, to work with the grassroots. One of the things we did before
we started 114 road projects was to have a workshop where we sat with all the
communities in which these roads passed. You’ll also see it in the way we are
making Lagos easier to commute. You cannot be in Lagos without commuting so the
community experience is a major phenomenon of what being in Lagos is all about.
The Governor has been working to ensure that movement from place to place easier
than before.
For
the sake of our readers, what are the roles of Office of Communities and
Communications?
They are quite integrated. There is
a large quantum of information that is generated every day in our communities
that is not well disseminated. A lot of people want to live, want to operate,
want to take decisions, they need intelligence on how to move around the
communities which they are not getting. What we have done therefore is to work
on the Lagos State Community media project. We have started that project and
we’re working with community print newspapers, we are activating them, we are
giving them strength. The Governor has gone ahead to sponsor their training
which has just been concluded. Right now, we are running a patronage advert in
all the 22 community newspapers and the aim is to give them the confidence that
Government is behind them and supporting their effort to provide information
platform in the communities where they cover. That includes community radios,
radio stations that are running community programmes . We are also going to
support them with commercials in getting what the Governor has been doing since
he assumed office. Beyond that, we are looking forward to three new projects.
Right now we are upgrading Lagos State University (LASU) Fm radio station and
Lagos State Polytechnic (LASPOTECH) Fm station and we are expanding their
programme content to include community speech and revolve around them. We look
forward to have community radio project which our Community Development Associations
(CDAs) in the Local governments will run as community radio stations of their
own to enable them pass information across board. We are going to have a
community television which is going to run on Lagos TV (LTV).
What is
government doing in the area of power supply?
We already found a solution to power
supply problemt, the solution to that is what we call Lagos State Energy
security. In the year 2000, Asiwaju Tinubu’s administration set up the Lagos
State development programme. In that development plan, he already identified
energy security as the key element and you will agree with me that Asiwaju
himself started with the barges, the Enron Independent Power Project (IPP),
which was the first ever in the country. It was supposed to provide energy for
the industrial sector in Lagos State so that more power can go to the homes but
that was aborted by the government of President Obasanjo. Other governments
have built on our IPP concept in the last 8 years. Five IPP projects have come
up in Lagos and those IPP projects enabled government to go off the national
grid and provide energy for various places. This Alausa secretariat is on IPP,
it is not on the national grid. So if the national grid collapses right now, we
will still have power supply in the secretariat.
Let’s talk about the housing programme of this
administration?
Our response to it is the rent-to-own
initiative. We have 8,000 housing units that were to be sold but we said the
people that are going to buy the Houses – the target population doesn’t exist
because they don’t have the purchasing power. So we rolled out the rent-to-own
concept. In other words, you can begin to pay your rent and after a certain
period of say 15 years, you can own it. So your rent becomes part your
contribution to owning a house. That has already been rolled out, people are
already subscribing to it and I can assure you, it is largely targeted at young
people and young families who are just starting afresh.
Who
can you refer to as your political mentor?
My mentor in politics is Asiwaju
Bola Ahmed Tinubu. He is my mentor because of his ideology and political
philosophy.
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