Speeches

5th Lagos State Executive/Legislative Parley
Theme: Planning & Budgeting for Accelerated Development

Oct 22, 2010 - Once again, I am grateful for the privilege and pleasure of welcoming you all to this quarterly meeting of Lagos State legislators and members of the State Executive Council.

As I do so, I also want to specially thank the Governor Emeritus, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, other party leaders here present and our distinguished Senators and Members of the House of Representatives for finding time to be with us today.

For reasons I will discourse shortly, I think this meeting offers us an uncommon opportunity to reflect on our role as public servants and our great potentials as agents of revolutionary change, both in Lagos and in Nigeria.

You may have noticed that as Nigeria turned 50 on the 1st of this month, the consensus of commentators, local and international, was that the leadership had performed far below expectation.

Almost every one that had something to say on the subject concluded that our rate of development was not at all in keeping with the obvious capacity of our human and material resources.

Your Excellencies, and distinguished ladies and gentlemen, I think these adverse comments must be taken as a personal challenge for each of us and a collective challenge for all in this room.

I submit therefore that, more than ever before, our overriding aspiration in public service must be to achieve a better quality of life for our people and our daily engagements must focus exclusively on how to realize this ambition.

Before I progress this theme and show its relevance to our meeting today, I want to congratulate our leaders, and then each and every one of us most warmly on the recent vindication of our party's electoral victory in Ekiti State.

As I witnessed the swearing in of His Excellency, Dr. John Olukayode Fayemi, as the Governor of Ekiti State, I found it to be such a humbling and inspiring event.

It was a timely renewal of hope in the efficacy of democracy in Nigeria. It was also an indication that victory always awaits in a just cause, when we keep up the struggle with unstinting effort and an unflinching belief in God Almighty.

Perhaps most importantly, that event was, and remains a firm indication of what is possible. After the blatant electoral robbery of 2003 in which the progressives were robbed in a most barbaric manner, there is hope today that all that was stolen can and will be recovered; and that our great party, Action Congress of Nigeria, will go on ultimately to lead the progressives towards the redemption of Nigeria as a whole.

One thing that is clear to me is that our people are keenly desirous of democracy and development. They want a better life for themselves and their children. They can always tell the good apart from the bad. They solidly appreciate and stand behind progress whenever they see it taking place.

Meanwhile, the reactionary conservatives who have historically wielded power across most of Nigeria with an almost constant control of the centre, will always seek to overrun the progressives and thwart the will of the people. Such simply are the dynamics of history.

We saw it at play in Western Nigeria in the early sixties. We saw it again in the mass riggings of 1983 and like a recurring decimal we had it in full force during the 2003 elections.

A remarkable aspect of these historical antecedents is that the powerful forces always fail woefully where government was most successful.

For Nigeria, this has always been the fortune our dear State of Lagos! With the astounding success of Ahaji Lateef Jakande, a government formed by a party that didn't have control of the centre was yet adjudged the best in Nigeria. It is no wonder then that all the rigging and maneuverings of 1983 could not sweep Alhaji Jakande from power.

Two decades later, the Government of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu achieved exactly the same feat. Although actively denied federal support, the Lagos Government again proved to be so successful that the marauding forces of the PDP could not even shake it. By the Grace of God, we have together and collectively retained this remarkable place of honour.

Yesterday somebody asked me what I felt about the threat of some 26 parties to defeat us. My answer was simple. It is seasonal political grandstanding and ACN's domain of control through good governance will only expand rather than diminish.

Lagos State today continues to stand out clearly as the best administration in Nigeria. If, as members of the same party and stakeholders in the same administration, we continue with the same unity of purpose and dedication to duty, no one; I repeat, no one outside this room can successfully degrade our achievement. As history abundantly proves, our fortunes are literally ours to keep or lose.

If I may return to the Ekiti episode, I said earlier that it signaled the possible. I think the point bears repetition and emphasis.

I have no doubt in my mind that as ACN governments continue to present a superior alternative to all other pretenders that we see around Nigeria today, what is ours will surely come back to us. Furthermore, people in other parts of Nigeria will inevitably yearn for the kind of leadership, policies and personalities that we have in our great party. The signs are already emerging and the next few weeks and months will vindicate my belief.

What I am saying is that with proper planning and rigorous implementation of our people-oriented policies, it is only a matter of time before we take charge of the centre and decisively pull Nigeria up to its rightful place in the comity of rapidly developing nations. That indeed is the crux of my message.

The main question now is – what, as a group, do we have to do to attain this historic destiny? To my mind, the answer is three fold. First, ACN simply has to be the most democratic and egalitarian, and yet most disciplined and cohesive of all the parties in Nigeria. In this respect, our party structure must itself be a beacon of hope calling all other progressives into our fold.

Secondly, we have to plan and strategise better than any other party or group in Nigeria. All of us to the last man must deploy our skills and experiences towards the development of party programmes, administrative guidelines and monitoring procedures that are second to none.

We must resolve our internal differences with dispatch and offer constructive criticisms and credible alternatives to the policies and actions of other parties. In short, wherever the ACN flag is flown, it must be the insignia of qualitative administration for an enlightened and people-oriented development.

Thirdly, the administration in each of the States in which we have control must reflect this high quality party backing and come out as the best possible government in its place and time. Most importantly, this must reflect in the lives of our people so much so that they become our most ardent proponents and most reliable bastion against the reactionary forces.

This, I dare say, is our common heritage as witnessed the comments of the great sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo when he introduced the Action Group at Owo on the 28th of April, 1951:

"... I would like to say that this, in my humble opinion, is the first time in the annals of Nigeria that a political party is reared on a really scientific basis. For if all the leading members in the Action Group have more or less identical conceptions as to the principles which shall guide their activities, and jointly evolve common methods of applying those principles, it is my firm conviction that the organisation will be successful and lasting.

"Only we must make sure about two things, namely: that our principles are just, and that our methods are practical. For nothing defeats their own ends, so easily as unjust principles and impractical methods of approach."

Your Excellencies, distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, the onus of taking us towards this envisaged level of achievement lies essentially not only on our party leaders, but indeed directly on each and every one of us. In one way or the other, we exert influence on our leaders - for better or for worse.

If we advise them for our own personal benefits alone or we take a divisive and contentious approach to every issue, God forbid, we cannot possibly attain the great potentials I alluded to earlier. Rather we will thereby give room for our opponents to penetrate our veil with possibly disastrous consequences.

As Chief Obafemi observed in similar circumstances, even when the Action Group was still in its infancy:

"Our enemies and detractors are already at work. They are seeking to dwarf our stature in order to delude the public that they are taller than we are. They are also seeking to divert us from our noble and constructive courses into the barren land of petty strife and fruitless controversy."

On the other hand, if we are forthright and selfless; if we consciously build bridges and seek consensus whenever we enter the arena of public discourse, party cohesion becomes rock solid and victory is certain.

I think I speak for all of us when I say that we have but one goal in our public life. That one goal is the attainment of maximum welfare for our people. To this goal, all others must be subordinate. Any concern, interest, purpose or activity which does not advance the welfare of the good people of Lagos State must therefore be illegitimate and contemptible.

For this reason, the virtues of humility, patience, understanding and accommodation must become very prominent in our fold. This is the only way we can build unity which is symbolized by our party symbol of the broom that finds strength in each of its each of its component stands who remain bound together to discharge the task at hand.

Within each government in which our great party has control and leadership, the challenge is even greater. I think in order to attain the aims that I set forth earlier, the legislative and executive arms must relate positively with each other in such a way as to bring out the very best in each other.

Of course, each must play its constitutionally assigned role, especially in checking the possible excesses of the other and in keeping with the rationale for separation of powers.

However, in doing that, the prevailing spirit of members of the executive and members of the legislature must always be that of mutual understanding and cooperation towards the attainment of the common goal.

As Thomas Jefferson said in relation to the American Constitution –

"A spirit of forbearance and compromise, therefore, and not of encroachment and usurpation, is the healing balm of such a Constitution; and each party should prudently shrink from all approach to the line of demarcation, instead of rashly overleaping it."

This, I believe, is the spirit in which these executive/legislative parleys are convened and I daresay, it has helped us thus far in no small measure to foster a feeling of forbearance and compromise and to put a healing balm on frayed sensibilities.

You would recall that our last meeting focused on the adoption of best practices in public sector management. That topic is so vital and expansive that we can profitably remain on it for a long time to come. And that is, more or less, what we are going to do today.

Best practice in public administration begins with proper planning and budgeting and, more than all others, this is a field where the executive and legislative arms of government are required to work harmoniously together for the common good.

The timing is also auspicious. Just before this meeting, the formal process of preparing the 2011 budget started and, soon after our meeting, the executive will once again be laying its proposals before the legislature. To make each exercise better than the last, we must have a review process such as the one we are doing today.

Your Excellencies and distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, the success of rapidly developed economies like Singapore, China and Brazil, has been attributed to a most impeccable planning preceding a very diligent execution. It does appear that that is where we must also begin in Lagos and in Nigeria.

We have therefore tasked Mr. Yemi Cardoso, highly successful Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget in Asiwaju's renowned Government to research for us the common planning trends of booming economies.

Personally, I cannot wait to hear from him. I trust you are equally eager.

As we all know, the planning and budgeting process is guided by a deft demarcation of roles and a set of legal and constitutional guidelines which have proved challenging in practice not just for us but also for other governments across the country.

Later on, Professor Ayo Atsenuwa of the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies will take us through this legal and constitutional maze.

Hopefully, by the time she finishes, all of us would be better informed and our findings and consensus can become one of the secret weapons of ACN governments to be fine tuned at larger ACN government conferences which I think we should start organising now.

With a common purpose, proper planning and an impregnable party platform, it cannot be long before we take the driver's seat towards the rapid and constructive development of Nigeria.

I look forward to an engaging session of learning and interaction.

Eko o ni baje o!

Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN
Governor of Lagos State