Posted by Bola Tinubu, the All Progressives Congress presidential candidate, has claimed that as governor of Lagos from 1999 to 2007, he transformed the city from a jungle to a megacity.
Tinubu said in a Channels TV program on Friday night that he laid the foundation that all subsequent Lagos State governors after him built on and are still building on to make the state what it is today.
“When I became governor of Lagos State in 1999, Lagos was a jungle,” he added. It was an absolutely barbaric situation. There were garbage dumps everywhere, schools with no roofs, and hospitals without ambulances or oxygen tanks to save lives. It was in terrible condition.
“We gradually put things in place, and the state began to take shape.” What we accomplished was transform the state’s obligations to assets.
“The Victoria Island districts from the Civic Centre to the Oriental Hotel were once waste dumps, but look at what they’ve become now.” Only the elderly would remember all of this.”
According to the mini documentary on Tinubu, the APC presidential candidate reengineered the state’s revenue, and after he left the governorship in 2007, Lagos became completely autonomous from the federal government in terms of revenue generation, having previously been solely dependent on federal allocations.
At the time, the state’s internal revenue was N600 million per month, and it was entirely dependent on the Federal Government.
“When Tinubu left office in 2007, Lagos’ IGR was N7 billion per month.” Babatunde Fashola expanded that legacy to N15 billion per month. “This was made feasible by Tinubu’s short, medium, and long-term revenue and wealth generation goals for the state,” the documentary showed.
In a short clip from the mini-documentary, the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd. ), described Tinubu as a political strategist, which brought him (Buhari) to Tinubu.
“Asiwaju Bola Tinubu has distinguished himself as a political strategist and a mountain of ideas, which drew me to him,” Buhari remarked. He is a true humanitarian who has made significant contributions to Nigeria’s and Africa’s success.”
In the show, former governor Babatunde Fashola and current governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu both credited the APC presidential candidate for the majority of the projects that their governments completed. They hailed Tinubu as the brains behind the state’s developments, noting that his term produced the majority of them long before they were implemented.