2023: Don’t gamble with inexperienced candidates, Sanwo-Olu warns Lagosians
Lagos state governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu has dismissed any threat of losing his re-election next year to any of the opposition parties, particularly the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP).
Telescope.ng reports the governor, who is the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) made the remark recently on a live television programme, Channels’ Politics.
He said he is the candidate to beat in the election, having garnered experience and delivered dividends of democracy to Lagosians in the last three and half years that he has been on the saddle.
Governor Sanwo-Olu said the electorates should not gamble with any candidate of any political party without experience in governance.
Sanwo-Olu threatened by the PDP candidate, Dr Abdul-Azeez Olajide Adediran, he said there was no threat at all, adding that his performance speaks for him. He said:” If you have an emergency at 3 am, who would you call? Do you call a man that has experience; that has gone through the trenches before; that understands what the issues are and appreciates what are the challenges or do you take a chance with someone that doesn’t know what the issues of governance are?
He said: “This is Lagos with an informed audience. This is not a tea party. We are talking about real governance. We are talking about the governance of more than 20 million Nigerians; an economy that is bigger than the economy of Ghana and Kenya. In itself, it is a country.
“I don’t want to disparage anyone. I have respect for all the candidates that have emerged. Now, on the particular candidate you are talking about, where do we start from? What are his pedigrees? The governance of Lagos should not be by trial and error. We need to hit the ground running from day one. I know the names of all my 65 permanent secretaries and their pedigrees. I have gone through it and I know it.”
Sanwo-Olu added that he has earned the trust of Lagosians for a second term. The governor also said he has resolved the challenge of Apapa gridlock.
His words: “I have fixed Apapa gridlock. Even the Nigerian Port Authority (NPA) and all of the major businesses in Apapa have written to me to thank us. The residents have also written to thank us.
“However, we still have trailers on the road because we do not have enough trailer parks and we are building one around Orile. If we have an effective call-up system, you have no business coming to Apapa, except you are needed along that corridor.
“The trailer parks need to have enough facility in their terminals to take those trailers off the road. So, in terms of the gridlock, we’ve done a whole lot of work there. Part of the problem is to fix the road so that the trailers won’t have to be on the road.”