Former Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola has stated that top priorities for the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government are security and economony.
The minister-designate told AllAfrica that if infrastructure such as transport and energy gets better, “goods and services and people will move much more efficiently and that can only lead to productivity and the prosperity and quality of life that people want to see.”
According to him, “The President is clearly focused on security. We have seen some results, and it will get better.
“Dealing with the criminals who now terrorize parts of our country in a faceless manner poses challenges for our security apparatus, who were trained to deal with conventional opponents rather than these unconventional methods where soft targets are their victims. And government really, with all its best intentions, can’t be in every home and every corner of our society.”
On his expulsions of people from Lagos while in office, he said, “I think it isn’t appropriate to classify it as an expulsion. It wasn’t. We had citizens who had no address and probably migrated from God-knows-where to our state.”
“They were living as destitutes. Some had psychiatric problems. Some had other health issues. We rehabilitated them. When they got rehabilitated, they had to leave because it cost a lot of tax-payer money to keep feeding them on a daily basis, year-in, year-out. In some cases, they said they wanted to go home”
“And as I said during the screening, we didn’t know where home was except for where they told us. We wrote three letters to their home governments. None of them was acknowledged. We had to do something.
“As I said during the screening, we took them to the boundary of the state they called home, in the belief that they would be able to reintegrate themselves back to their communities. Perhaps we could have done a little more. But we were not assisted by their state governments.”
On corruption, Fashola said his approach was to see that, “we got value for money and that there was good governance and the supremacy of law and order”.
“Human beings will fall short of standards their society expects of them, and whenever that happens, what needs to be done is to enforce the law and insist on compliance. That is what I have sought to do. But we must be careful. There are some instances where people level allegations when they have no shred of evidence or they misapprehend the way the system works.”
Responding to allegations that he spent 78 million naira on a website, Fashola insisted that the reports were untrue.
“Specifically to the boreholes, it never happened. But I have chosen not to continue to defend myself on the pages of newspapers because that is not the place to resolve allegations of criminal wrongdoing. You do it in a court of law.
“These are institutions of state who have the authority to ask me to answer. As far as the website is concerned, first of all it was I, as governor, who insisted that every procurement be published on our state website.
“So if we had anything to hide, it would stand logic upside down to be publicizing our wrongdoing ourselves. And as I said during the senate screening, as governor I headed a network of institutions.
“There is also an independent procurement agency that validates procurements. All I did as governor was to sign off and approve expenditure after the procurement agency approved.
“I wasn’t elected with any limitations of powers of expenditure. It was I as governor who set limits on what I could do and what procurement agencies do.”
When asked which ministerial post he may hold, Fahola said only President Buhari can tell.
“He nominated us, so he would have a very clear idea what role he wants each of us to play. I believe he must have had deep reflection on who will be in what position.”
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