Lagos vs Abuja: Why Lagos deserves more attention now

By Martins Oloja

When the nation’s capital, Abuja, as an idea clocked 40 on February 3 this year (3rd February 1976-3rd February 2016), I had accused the authorities in Abuja – from the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) to the presidency of collective amnesia about the historic anniversary.

I had noted then that it was unfortunate that President Muhammadu Buhari, who was invited to Abeokuta to mark the state’s 40th birthday, forgot that Abuja and some states including Ogun, Ondo, Imo were created at the same time in 1976. This is the background to the two landmark events that resulted in creating five more states and Abuja.

On August 7, 1975, the then Head of State, General Murtala Ramat Muhammed inaugurated a five-man Committee on the creation of more states in the country. The Committee was headed by Justice Ayo Gabriel Irikefe. It was the panel that recommended an increase in number of states then from 12 to 19. Justice Irikefe later became the 9th Chief Justice of the Federation (1985-1987). Two days later, Hurricane Murtala set up another Panel headed by former Chief Justice of Botswana, Justice Timothy Akinola Aguda, on the possibility of a new Federal Capital for the country.

The tempestuous General did not waste time: he created seven more states from the recommendation of Justice Irikefe Panel and promulgated Decree No.6 of 1976 following a broadcast to the nation on February 3, 1976 that a new Federal Capital for the nation had been created. That was the date with history that seven states and Abuja had in 1976… And which was why I could not understand why all the agencies of government in the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) and the presidency could not remember to celebrate the date with history when the capital as an idea clocked 40 last month.

It would be recalled that I had also then said that the president’s men could not have been exonerated from the insufferable collective amnesia because Sections 299-302 of the 1999 Constitution as amended provide that the President is the Governor of the FCT and the Vice President is the Deputy Governor.

I had then noted that the presidency, too, should have prepared for the celebration of a milestone or prompted the FCT Minister he had delegated his powers to. Which was also why I anchored my conclusion of the article entitled, “Forty Hearty Cheers! But who is saluting Abuja @ 40?” on the expediency of celebrating Abuja’s historic birthday by remembering the late Murtala’s unfulfilled promises to Lagos 40 years ago. This was the way I had put the reminders:

What is more, the gridlock that Apapa-Oshodi expressway has become is always a reminder of the expediency of fulfilling the 40 years old promise to the last capital of the federation, Lagos.

“…And Murtala’s unfulfilled promises to Lagos…
Of all the failings exhibited about Nigeria’s capital, the most telling is failure to fulfill promises made to Lagos that was proposed by General Murtala as future Economic Capital of the Federation.
In his broadcast to the nation on February 3, 1976,  Murtala had promised that Lagos would not only be designated a “special area”, it would be Nigeria’s commercial capital and the deal would be incorporated into the 1979 Constitution then in the works.

His words: “Lagos will, in the foreseeable future, remain the nation’s commercial capital and one of its nerve centres. But in terms of servicing the present infrastructure alone, the committed amount of money and effort required will be such that Lagos State will not be ready to cope. It will even be unfair to expect the state to bear this heavy burden on its own. It is, therefore, necessary for the federal government to continue to sustain the substantial investment in the area. The port facilities and other economic activities in the Lagos area have to be expanded. There is need in the circumstance for the federal government to maintain a special defence and security arrangement in Lagos, which will henceforth be designated a SPECIAL AREA. These arrangements will be carefully worked out and written into the constitution. Kaduna and Port-Harcourt are to be accorded similar status and designated special areas under the constitution.”

I had then added that this is one remarkable promise to Lagos that no government since February 14, 1976 had fulfilled. The General made the promise on 3rd February and he was assassinated on 13th February 1976. I had also on the anniversary article noted:

“What is more, the gridlock that Apapa-Oshodi expressway has become is always a reminder of the expediency of fulfilling the 40 years old promise to the last capital of the federation, Lagos. That is why I would like to follow up this week on why President Muhammadu Buhari should, as a matter of urgent national importance hold an economic summit on Lagos as Nigeria’s economic capital.

Time for Economic Summit on Lagos
I think the time has come for us to accept responsibility for our actions and inactions about LAGOS. I would like to appeal to all of us to swallow our politics, pride and vanity for a moment and accept the fact that we have failed Lagos, our Lagos. There is a time for everything. It is time for remorse about Lagos. Again, it is not time for poetry about and history of Lagos: Our big elders and brothers, Dr Dele Cole, Odia Ofiemun, our own Bosede Sanwo, irrepressible Kaye Whiteman, etc have taken care of all that. This is not about why Lagos and Abuja have had to hate each other for the past 40 years. What we want to discuss is economics and not politics of Lagos Vs Abuja. We need to talk about development of Nigeria via the development of Lagos. We have to talk about development of the Lagos that makes the money that Abuja spends…

So, instead of asking some key actors hard questions about their role in the making and unmaking of Lagos, we should invite them to an economic summit where they should be remorseful enough to promise to pay reparation or restitution.

Here is the deal: There are actors and there are actors but some actors have been more active and resourcefully so than others about Lagos. General Obasanjo is one actor who has been involved in our recent past. He was one of the big “soldiers of fortune” to use the description of Siollun (2013) when the Apapa ports were conceived and built. He was in power in 1977 when some emissaries from Abu Dhabi came to Lagos, the then capital, to ask Nigeria for what they then called “bilateral loan” to set up their Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF). We obliged them and we used our wealth then to celebrate Festival of Art and Culture called “FESTAC 77”. Today Abu Dhabi with a population of 2.33 million, is the second largest Sovereign Wealth Fund in the world with a whopping $773 billion (USD) by 2014 survey. Norway is the world’s largest with $882 billion.

Nigeria with a population of about 170 million has only $1 just as Senegal ($1b). You are not invited to contextualize and blame “FESTAC 77” for this difference, please. This same big man, General Obasanjo, who succeeded Murtala in 1976, was supposed to work Lagos as Nigeria’s commercial capital into the 1979 Constitution then in the works. He did not fulfill the promise General Murtala made in his broadcast. It was “not his will”. This same Obasanjo returned to power as elected President in 1999 and left in 2007. Between him and the then Governor of Lagos State, Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu there was no love lost. The two of them for eight years never discussed how to rebuild and expand facilities in Apapa and sustain development there according to Murtala’s covenant with the people of Lagos in 1976.

And the big man Tinubu, too, has been in charge of Lagos politics, business and leadership since 1979. We can all see the development that has taken place since. Despite all the strong grips on Lagos, there is no way Lagos that Asiwaju Tinubu and Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola (2007-2015) dreamed of as a “Mega and World City” according to Whiteman (2012) can be described as a dream come true yet. Those who work with words can appreciate Lagos in a way that will make us romanticize about the megapolis as a city that works, pulsates, survives and grows as Dowden (2008) would do.

The Lagos of the Poets (Ofeimun 2010) can make you fall in love with the city by the Lagoon but it is still by 21st century standard a ‘Jungle City’ which should not be left alone to the Tinubu’s, the Fashola’s and Ambode’s alone…This is part of the discussion points as espoused by Whiteman (2012):

The challenge for Lagos today is that of the ever-expanding city, the twenty-first-century megapolis soon to be one of the world’s largest. Its population is now estimated conservatively by the UN among others to be anything between fifteen and eighteen million, and is expected to reach a possible 25 million by 2015. By 2025, it is expected to be the third largest city in the world…

The 2006 census that gave Lagos a low figure of 9 million has been rejected and described as a scam. The Lagos state official figure from their independent census, tallies with the United Nations’.

There is no doubt that there is too much politics and a great deal of arm-twisting in Abuja about project sites in Nigeria. That is why it is expedient to appeal to the Buhari government to shun political talks about the need to pay attention to Lagos where one of the pillars of the governing Party, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and the Power, Works and Housing Minister, Mr Babatunde Fashola hail from. In Abuja, gunmen are bound to emerge like a bolt from the blues and ask political questions about why there should be special attention to Lagos at this time. The bad men who always resort to some dubious sophistry will question why should there be attention to Lagos at this juncture when we need all the available funds to rebuild the broken empire walls in the North East. The political conmen in Abuja will even add another dimension of why should there be attention to Lagos at this critical time when money is needed for finding oil exploration opportunities in the Chad Basin in the North East. These authors of confusion are always in the State House, Abuja. They emerged to General IBB and asked him to stop the then national Electoral Commission of Nigeria (NECON) from further announcement of the 1993 June 12 presidential election results. The evil men around the Presidential Villa, Abuja quietly planned the debacle called Third Term agenda with President Olusegun Obasanjo and asked opposition gunmen to move in for demolition of the same political project 2007. They are always there. The workers of iniquity in the Abuja palace concocted the political quagmire that triggered the infamous “Doctrine of Necessity” before a constitutional requirement on succession could be effected. They are there as members of the Inner Circle. They were the ones who told President Goodluck Jonathan to secure Project 2015 with dollars, dollars everywhere. They told him to sack the NSA from his zone and put a candidate from the Caliphate there. The dealers in Abuja told President Jonathan 2015 would be a done deal with massive votes from Kebbi, Zamfara, Jigawa and Bauchi states. They are always in the palace without any portfolios. They are there now to tell President Buhari how the Lagos People, the South-West politicians led by Tinubu will not support him in 2019. They are there to demonize all the good leaders from Lagos and indeed South West. Just for not-so- enlightened selfish interest. But this is no time for geo-political arm-twisting. It is time for economics. There should be no political calculations about the need to get involved in developing Lagos. There should just be economic frame of mind for the following reasons:
The Sea Ports in Apapa;
The decrepit state of federal roads and bridges in Lagos;
The Murtala Muhammed International Airport;
Electricity distribution in Lagos.

These are the issues that should form the basis for development plans at the suggested Economic Summit on Lagos. I am persuaded that the Apapa- Oshodi Road reconstruction is too important to be left to Africa’s richest man alone. Alhaji Aliko Dangote has reportedly promised to develop the Apapa Ports area as part of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The authorities in Abuja should take the steam out of Dangote’s desire. It is not because it will significantly alter the balance of his account books. Rather, it is just that it will not be what the Ports environment should be made to be. Under President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in 2008, for instance, there was a mega dream to construct ten-lane roads from the Abuja city centre to the Airport and Giri junction and another from the city centre to Madalla, the capital city’s boundary with Niger state. The Yar’Adua road projects when Senator Adamu Aliero was FCT Minister, have changed the profile of Abuja, although it is uncompleted. Why can’t the federal government construct a 10-lane road from Apapa to Ojota and from Ojota to Ibadan? That will be remarkable but too much for Dangote alone to do.

The economic reasons:
After all, in 2015, the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) made N196.26 billion. And in 2016, it has projected N201. 3 billion. The bulk of this revenue comes from Lagos alone.
What is more, the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) collected a total of N903 billion in 2015 out of a target of N954 billion. The Comptroller-General of Customs, Col Hamid Ali (Rtd) who confirmed this figure had earlier declared to the press that 75 per cent of this revenue is generated in Lagos.

In the downstream Petroleum sector National PMS supply in January this year, for instance was 806 million litres. Out of Lagos PMS Supply was the highest with 233 million litres. It will be recalled that this was not enough. Abuja the powerful nation’s capital got 100 million. This is from National Bureau of Statistics (NBC).

The FIRS reportedly collected N1.23 trillion from VAT nationwide in 2015. You know it is the same pattern: Lagos unarguably contributed about 50 per cent of the revenue. There are other issues that make Lagos the authentic Economic Capital of West Africa. But this is the point that it has been unconscionable that successive governments have been paying lip service to Lagos. The Apapa port roads that provide the biggest revenue from Customs Service and NPA are the most deadly in the state. Yet the arteries are more important than the President Yar’Adua’s ten-lane roads being constructed in Abuja for N257 billion raised from bonds.

The so-called International Airport roads are indescribable. The roads from Oshodi through Mafoluku-Ajao Estate axis are too terrible to behold. Fuel tanker farms have taken over the waterlogged bad roads. This is intolerable! The Lagos-Ibadan, Shagamu-Benin Roads are part of the Apapa-Oshodi economic routes. The electricity situation report in Lagos is also pathetic. The Economic Capital is a paradigm of what the legendary Fela Anikulapo once called “suffering and smiling”. Really, people and industries are dying in Lagos for lack of electricity. It is a city in darkness. It stands to reason that Lagos share from a mere 2,000- 4000 megawatts of electricity is a huge joke. The federal roads too have been left unmaintained for years and the portholes deserve attention of the owners at this time of change as a fundamental objective and directive principle of a governing party policy.

Therefore, I think that since all governments since the killing of General Murtala’s dream in 1976 have been guilty of neglecting Lagos, it is fitting that President Buhari whose government reportedly killed the Metroline Project in 1983 should brace up to pay attention to Lagos. He can begin with a tour of Lagos for a week. And that tour should take him to Apapa Ports during an Economic Summit on Lagos. As I noted earlier, residents of Lagos have nothing to do with politics. They are from all the states of the federation. They are as many Muslims as there are Christians and free thinkers. There are too many important residents who daily witness the mess that the Lagos has become. They are influential. They know when a government is relevant and otherwise. Lagos residents include the richest man in Africa who is a Fulani from Kano. His business head office is in Lagos, our Lagos. The conclusion of the whole matter is that the mega city is too important to be abandoned by a serious federal government. It is too much for the state to maintain. It is too undeveloped for the residents to bear. And here is the thing: It is no longer permissible to blame Abuja for political neglect. Now, both Lagos and Abuja are in the hands of the ruling Party, the APC. No more excuses and blame game. Yes, Lagos makes the money that Abuja spends. So, when is the Economic Summit on Lagos? I hope the answer is not blowing in the wind again! Welcome to Lagos, that The Economist recently summarised for us this way:

Now that the APC holds power in Abuja as well as Lagos, the city has a chance to do better still…
It could also teach politicians in the capital a thing or two. One lesson is that it helps to foster a broad tax base, instead of just relying on oil (which provides more than two-thirds of the central government’s revenues). Better tax collection would make the budget less vulnerable to wild swings in the oil price. It might also lead to more accountable governance: people who pay tax tend to demand better services in return. Another moral is that better infrastructure boosts economic growth, and if you don’t have the money to pay for it upfront, you can get private investors to do so instead: witness Lagos’s toll-roads and bridges.
For badly run countries in other parts of the world, the big lesson of Lagos is that reforms in one big city can sometimes kick-start wider change…

Let the big men in Abuja plan the Economic Summit on Lagos today. If well organized, Nigeria’s economy will not remain the same again. And General Murtala Muhammed will sleep well as his dream for Lagos 40 years ago would have come true.

This article first appeared on The Guardian Newspaper.