The governor Lagos needs

By TESLIM SHITTA-BEY

He is generally recognized as a convivial fellow, a decent chap with no chip over his shoulder. His joviality hides a cerebral core and carves a deflected impression of his capacity for deep thought. However, this is the least of Akinwunmi Ambode, governor of Lagos state’s headaches. The state he now governs has more pressing and permissive problems; Lagos State has increasingly lost its economic edge and floundered dangerously in achieving ordered socio-economic growth.  The state is flush with signs of urban decay, social dislocation and industrial decline.

Raising the states, Internally Generated Revenue from what now seems a meagre N600million per month at the start of the Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration in 1999 to a towering N20billion per month at the beginning of the present administration is phenomenal progress, representing a sixteen-year compound annual growth in revenue of 26.3 per cent. However, sustaining this sizzling rate is definitely impracticable and could end up being the Ambode administration’s Achilles heel. The state is currently at the upper inflection point of a revenue curve with future tax expectations likely to plateau to about N25billion per month over the next four years.

This has significant implications for the state’s future borrowing capacity and its ability to provide jobs for at least ten (10) million or 58 percent of its estimated 17 million citizens most of whom are between the ages of 18 and 34. The unemployment rate in the state is estimated to be between 20 and 22 per cent of the state’s labour force (this is based on the former definition of unemployment by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and not its recent gobbledygook which puts the national unemployment rate at 7 per ent; the NBS’s recent national unemployment figure is bizarre, if the country’s unemployment rate is 7 percent  then what is its natural rate of unemployment, given that the United States of America’s natural rate is currently placed at 6 percent? Does Nigeria now have ‘full employment’?).

The Lagos case is made worse by declining industrialization as a result of piratic tax rates chased by a platoon of levies that cut deeply into the thinning profits of most Lagos-based companies. Ambode needs to act fast, being financially savvy himself, he must realize that there is a point where higher tax rates lead to lower revenues, in periods of recession (as is the current case), lowering tax rates stimulate economic activity by jimmying up domestic consumption and improving employment and incomes that in turn lead to more tax revenue. Creating a more favourable business environment with lower tax burdens would begin to address the issues of competitiveness.

Another problem with Lagos is a creeping phobia for non-Yoruba residents of the state. This is the indirect consequence of the Oba of Lagos stirring up subtle but hitherto cleverly managed ethnic cleavages within the state. His coarse statement that Igbo citizens within the state would be dumped into the Lagos lagoon and that his ancestors would besiege them with poxes if they refused to vote for a party of his choice was an aberration from the traditional dignity associated with the revered Lagos throne.

It also exposes the astonishing naivety of the state’s cultural elites. Lagos cannot do without a lively, industrious and entrepreneurial migrant population. At the very heart of the state’s success is it sturdy and ebullient commercial and industrial base, a product of a melting pot of Nigerians melded into a harmonious community of economic agents from a variety of places across the federation. Ambode must keep this culture of accommodation and friendliness alive and well. But this, however, should not be at the expense of the indigenous Lagosians sense of indigeneship bequeathed to him or her by the good fortune of birth and ethnic origin. A Yoruba man or woman of Lagos extraction should be proud of the states, heritage and expect to be treated with dignity and respect within the state.

The rather irritating and brash statement that Lagos is a ‘no-man’s land’ is ludicrous. It is a dastardly perverse affront to the sensibilities of well-established Lagos families that have rich and documented histories of their origins and makes light of the serious issue of social pride and self-worth. American Indians are still till this day recognized as the true indigenous people of America despite centuries of immigrants from Europe, Asia and Africa. The same can be said of aboriginal Australians.

The real point is that all communities and tribes in Lagos must learn to respect one another and collaborate in such a manner as to build a Lagos that is a safe, friendly and productive home to everyone.  The politics of tribe should be kept where it belongs, the safe confines of tribal town hall meetings.

Ambode must hit the ground running. For Lagos, the clock of socio-economic decline is ticking and Lagosians expect nothing less than a strong, clearheaded and farsighted response. Progress is not a respecter of tribe but of decisions. The governor Lagos needs is a man of ideas and inimitable action.