BREAKING NEWS, Politics
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THE Lagos State government is planning to phase out yellow buses, popularly called Danfo from plying the roads in the State and to replace them with world class mass transportation system that would make it easy for people to move around in the city.
At the 14th Annual Lecture of the Centre for Values in Leadership, CVL, held at Muson Centre in Onikan with the theme: “Living Well Together, Tomorrow: The Challenge Of Africa’s Future Cities,” Akinwunmi Ambode, Lagos State governor, said that the present connectivity mode in Lagos, was not acceptable and not befitting for a mega city. He said that a well-structured transportation mode will soon be put in place to address the challenge.
“When I wake up in the morning and see all these yellow buses and see Okada and all kinds of tricycles and then we claim we are a mega city, that is not true and we must first acknowledge that that is a faulty connectivity that we are running,” he said.
According to him, the solution is to banish yellow buses this year so as to address the issue of connectivity that can make people move around with ease.
“For instance, people going from Ikorodu to CMS have started leaving their cars at home because the buses are very convenient and so why can’t we do that for other places? Yes, we don’t have the money to do that but we can go to the capital market and then improve on the technology of collection of fares and that will encourage investors and then the city will change,” Governor Ambode said.
Ambode also plans to embark on massive reform in waste management system that will be actualized by July. “We are also embarking on massive reform in the waste and sanitation management system. I don’t like the way the city is and the Private Sector Participants, PSP, collectors are not having enough capacity to do it but again should I tax people to death, the answer is no. I don’t want to tax people and so we need this partnership with the private sector so that they can invest in the sanitation management of the city and in no time maybe by July, the city will change forever.”
In his opening remarks, Pat Utomi, CVL founder and renowned development expert, said the idea behind the formation of the group was to get young people to begin to appreciate early what leadership was all about being service to the people.
He said Lagos has been the best governed State in Nigeria in the last 18 years, and a good example of what the country should be beyond and without oil.
— Feb 6, 2017 @ 19:00 GMT
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