Exclusive interview with Governor of Lagos State, One of the most relevant leaders in Africa
I hated school, failed WAEC and almost became a mechanic – Governor Fashola
He spoke
about his hatred for school, love for soccer and the cinema until his father
whipped him into line with a threat to make him a mechanic’s apprentice.
Nobody
knows what day he was born; so I am going to take the question on reflection
from perhaps the time some consciousness began to form in my mind about the
future. In that sense, the kind of country I had so much faith in really has
not materialized. So, it’s an anniversary of mixed blessings for me. If you
like, it’s positive in the sense that there is life.
Also, in
many respects, some of the things I wanted personally for myself, maybe in
terms of career, have largely materialized, although like in my profession, I
still believe that there is an unfinished business there. But, when I look
back, I’ll say there were some decisions I took as a young person, the
opportunity to study abroad that I rejected because I felt that I could never
be all I could be in a land where I was not a citizen. That was one reason.
I look
at the decisions that presented themselves when I left the university and close
to half of my colleagues that we graduated, left Nigeria out of frustration. I
was one of the few who said, “No, I think that the problems of this nation will
be solved and this is where my best opportunities lie.” In that sense
again, that opportunity has not materialized. I see so much that we can do but
are still undone. So, it’s a season of mixed blessings for me. Personally, I
can’t say that is the kind of fulfillment that I desired.
We
can’t talk about the present without talking about the past.
Let’s
go down memory lane. What was childhood like for Babatunde Fashola?
Sure, a
lot of fun. I grew up in Surulere. I lived in Surulere all my life. The first
time I am living on the island was when I moved in here. So, it was fun; I did
everything that young people do. My grandmother used to trade at Oyingbo
market. I remember that every Tuesday was the market day; so, I would wake up
with her at 5am, help her tie the pots and pans with my tiny hands. She used to
sell Tower Aluminum pots and pans. She believed that my six digits were signs
of prosperity; so, she would tell me to put my hands on them. At the end of the
market day when she came back, I would be the one to count her money. She was
not very literate but she could count her money in pound. When we migrated to
naira, it became a problem; so I had to do the multiplication of the number of
pounds to get the naira for her, but I always got a reward. I got bags of
chocolate and Nicco biscuits. Of course, it meant that on Wednesday morning, I
would be a hero in class, sharing my biscuits.
Those
were great memories. We flew kites; on Sundays, we went to church, St Jude’s
Church in Ebutte-Metta, and after church, we looked forward to Uncle Ben’s rice
and chicken. Of course, those of you who lived in that era will remember the
perpetual fight over Fanta; who was going to get the bottle. We had to share a
bottle; maybe, two or three of you and there was a feeling that the person who
had the bottle had more content. So, that was it – I did all the regular
things, played street soccer.
I played
truant in school a lot and I didn’t like school because there were too many
interesting things to do –play football and go to the cinema. My mum used
to take us to cinema; that was when cinema was popular. The one at Onipanu, on
Ikorodu Road, Metro Cinema was where I first saw James Bond’s Gold Finger. She
took us to the cinema on the last Sunday of every month. That was the kind of
childhood I had and we lived in regular middle class home. My mum is a nurse
and my dad a journalist. I also remember that my affinity for Juju music came
from my grand-parents because my
grandfather used to buy Sunny Ade’s records. We had a Grundy player and that was where I learnt all Sunny Ade’s music. It
was always blaring and I learnt how to change the records. I still draw a lot
of inspiration from the deep philosophy in those songs. There is a lot of rich
philosophy if you bother to listen to the lyrics rather than the music. You
will see their stories of tribulations and success and if you look at them now
and listen to their songs, you will see that every success story is founded on
adversity. They faced their own adversities. Obey was once accused of carrying
drugs. They had their bitter rivalries. He was accused of supporting criminals
when he sang for a notorious armed robber and he quickly had to do ‘E maf’oju
buruku wo onileesi….’ and all of those things. Of course, there were supposed feuds
that helped to bring more converts and those were the
building blocks of my childhood.
I didn’t
see the civil war in but my memories of the war have summed up in a word, ‘Moto
gagara.’ I will tell you the story of Moto gagara. I must have been around four
years old when the war broke out and our brothers from the east were moving
back home and in big trucks. For a four-year-old, the sound of those trucks was
frightening. So, any time I saw them, I always wanted to go out and play and my
grandmother would say, “Stay indoors.” So, the only thing that kept me in was
the sound of those trucks; I would rush back into the house. So, any time I
wanted to go out, she would say, ‘don’t go out, Moto gagara …,’ and I would
scamper. Post war was the reconstruction of Lagos and many parts of Nigeria; so
riding through the streets of Surulere, seeing the stadium being built,
National Theatre – the sand filling that took place from Iponri; we rode
bicycles through all those places; through Badagry Expressway.
I
remember Yinka Folawiyo was the main supplier of cement to the site then and
all of these, l did riding bicycle. I remember going with my grandmother to her
house in Oshodi to collect her rent. She had a lawyer who managed her property
in Oshodi and I recall that after every visit, she always complained that the
lawyer had cheated her and the final word always was my promise to her that I
would be a lawyer so that I would manage the property for her for free. And
unfortunately, that happened only after she died. Of course, I took over the
property; then my younger brother who is also a lawyer took it over from me and
we still manage it. We are trying to renovate it now but that gave me a very
strong knowledge of Oshodi because we used to walk through all those places and
I knew how it was as a child then. It gave me a good knowledge. My aunt lived
in Bariga, so I would take a bus from Oshodi to Bariga and then from Bariga to
Akoka.
Your
mother was a nurse, your dad a journalist, how did you end being a lawyer,
instead of in the sciences or in journalism?
Well, I
think that our parents are the mirror through which we see life. So, maybe
somewhere down the line, my grandmother’s exhortation struck a chord but more
importantly was the fact that I was very horrible with mathematics. Or perhaps
not horrible; let me explain it. The primary school I went to used to do
arithmetic; then in 1972 or 1973, Nigeria turned decimal. So, some schools
started doing mathematics. We remained with arithmetic because we were then
getting ready for common entrance and I think the school thought that it would
be difficult to change us. So, I think they got the National Common Entrance
body then to set two sets of questions. In the front was mathematics and then
there was a footnote that if you did arithmetic in school, turn to the next
page. But even at that, I just managed to score about 50 or 60 to pass
arithmetic. So, by the time I got to form one, it was straight mathematics. I
remember it was an American who taught us mathematics and I just couldn’t hear
what he said in class. First, because of the accent, secondly all the signs on
the board were new. So, I just stopped going to mathematics class. I didn’t
stop initially, I just sat down there; I just found something else to distract
myself until he left the class. But my Physics, Biology and Chemistry were quite
good. I was taught by two Indians, Mr & Mrs Matthews. Mr Matthews taught
Physics and Chemistry; Mrs Matthews taught us Biology and I desired at that
time to be a doctor. I wanted to be a surgeon and I was very good in Biology. I
am still conversant with it. I am just enamoured by nature but in form three,
going into form four, we were going to choose subjects and they called my
parents and said, look, this man’s Biology is good, in chemistry, he doesn’t
solve any equation, he just answers the theory questions and leaves the rest
blank and that he has to withdraw from the science class and move to the arts
class. I said well, I was ready to do that; there was no point arguing but that
they would allow me to keep my Biology and they agreed. Then, I focused more on
history, bible knowledge, literature, geography and by the time, it was all
done, the only professional course I could do without mathematics was law. So,
that’s it but it’s not something I didn’t want to do. In a sense, there was a
little bit of a mix. I enjoyed every day I spent in the law class. And I think
that I am better for it because in the course of my practice, it has enabled me
to know a lot more about other disciplines because you are a client to doctors,
to patients who sue doctors, to engineers and to people claiming compensation
for building damage. So, you have to know quantity survey, engineering. There
are areas of life that you never read about but you have to learn by force once
a client comes in, otherwise, you give up the brief and the money.
Tell
us again the story of how you missed travelling abroad with your siblings
because your school grades didn’t meet your father’s expectation.
At that
time, around 1976/77, my father decided apparently that part of the education
of his children was to travel abroad. For us, it was fun; for him, it was
education. We didn’t know that and we used to think he was a rich man. It was
much later that we realised that he borrowed money to send us on those trips
but the qualification always was that you must be in the top five in your
class. I was always the one who didn’t make it. So, they dropped me twice. For
me, school was too much of a problem. There was football to be played and I
didn’t learn how to study until I was in A’ Levels class. Sometimes, I didn’t
go to class and just two days before exams, I would come in and ask; what did
you people do? And I would look at somebody’s note and read to just get the
minimum pass.
At
what point did you change this attitude of hating school?
When I
failed School Certificate (general laughter). I wrote school certificate when I
was 14 and half. So, I just didn’t understand what the big deal about this WAEC
exam was. Why is everybody reading when we should be playing? I found out that
all my playmates had left me behind and I didn’t even know what to read. So, I
just went into the exams, wrote what I knew, passed biology and the rest were
P7, P8 and of course mathematics stood out, F9. When the result came; my dad
and I went to the school and the teachers were congratulating my dad. They
said, this boy didn’t come to school. My dad said he was no longer paying for
exams again. He told me that he had booked an apprenticeship for me with his
mechanic, so I broke down in tears. He said I should go and think about it,
discuss with my mum and come back to him to decide what I was going to do. One
week after, I went to see him and said well, I still want to go to school. And
he said the mechanic was waiting. I think it was that shock treatment that
changed my attitude. I went on to write the exam again and I passed. Then, I
got into A’ Levels class and it was very good in the first year and everybody.
My dad said that it must have been because I hadn’t discovered the football
field there. In a sense, it was true; by the end of first year, I got into the
football team in Igbobi College and the grades just started dropping.
I tell
everybody who cares to listen; I am a product of many chances and that’s why I
give a second, third and fourth chances to everybody who is serious; those are
the messages for me. I also acknowledge observably that my parents own the
credit for what I have become; they just didn’t give up. I don’t think that any
parent should give up on any child. By the time I entered the university, all
of the freedom I wanted was an anticlimax. There was nobody to tell me to go
and study. By the first week in the university, I was the one waking others up
to go and study. I don’t know how that consolation came and I was able, through
the university, to still combine football and tennis with my academic work.
What I simply did was that by 6am, I was up to do my exercise. I used to jog in
the morning. By 8am, I would be in class till 4pm and by 4pm, I was in the
sports complex till 7pm. By 7pm, I was cleaning up; 8pm, I ate dinner and
between 8pm and 9pm, I studied. I studied one hour every day till I left the
university and it worked. So, I was always ready for exams long before it came.
It was the same thing I did in the law school. I played tennis throughout law school
exams everyday and it didn’t affect my grade. Well, maybe it could have been
better but I left the school with a 2:2 and I left the law school with a 2.2. I
think that is enough effort really. My dad wanted me to do masters but those
were his plans. My own plans had become different and I was not going to argue
with him. He collected the form, I filled it and I submitted it late. Yes, I
was tired of school; I had become a lawyer. I didn’t need masters; I wanted to
practice. I didn’t want to be a company secretary where I would need a higher
degree to get promotion. I knew what kind of law I wanted, to be in the
courtroom. I didn’t need a masters degree to do that.
At
what point did you really develop interest in public service?
Public
service is just perhaps another stepping stone in my life’s journey. There was
no desire for that. I didn’t like public service, make no mistake about it. I
was posted to the Ministry of Justice in the University of Benin as a corps
member. I was posted to the Office of the Solicitor-General. She was away
appearing in some other sittings outside Benin and for three days, nobody could
attend to me and I told myself, this is not the place you want to work. By the
time the Solicitor-General came on the third day, I just went to her and said:
Ma, I have been waiting for you, I don’t want to work here. Please just
transfer me. And she said: How can I transfer you without even trying you? And
I told her that I would not work there. She was a very nice woman, Mrs Omorude.
She later became a judge of the High Court in Edo State. She asked me if I
didn’t have a wig and gown and I did. Yes, She asked: Why don’t you want to
work here? I said: Well, I was here for three days; you were not around and
nobody seemed willing to take responsibilities. The impression I get is that I
wouldn’t do anything unless you approve of it. So, if you are not around, we
won’t work and I don’t want to be in an environment where I can’t think on my
own and take decisions. She said: No, it’s not like that. I said: Well the
evidence I have is like that. And I remember her words; she said: Young man,
your mind seems to be made up and I’m not going to stand in your way. Where do
you want to go to? Do you have another place? I told her yes but I didn’t. I
just wanted to get out of the place, so she let me go and I started pounding
the streets of Benin, looking for my seniors in the university who were already
lawyers and looking for a place where somebody could accommodate me. By night
fall, I had gotten a place and that was where I did my youth service. That was
my impression of government. Coming back home, I saw that if you wanted to get
anything done in any department of government, it could go on for weeks and
weeks and I said no, this is not for me. I used to be very critical of
government in my own small corner. But one day, Governor Tinubu sent for me and
said: Tunde, Lai is going to Ilorin; he wants to be governor, I need help. You
were part of the people who supported my campaign, you can’t leave me to do the
work alone; so come and join me. That was on a Wednesday. Well, he scheduled
the meeting for 4pm on Wednesday but I didn’t get to see him until 1:00am on
Thursday morning. We were all there in his office. I got home around 2am or so
and went to my office in Igbosere. Later in the day, I think the GSM had come
then, I got a call from the Head of Service asking for my address and before
the end of the day, I got a letter asking me to resume in Alausa the following
day, which was Friday August 16, 2002. I called my partner and said: I won’t
see you tomorrow; I am gone. That’s all because the way we ran the chambers,
everybody knew what the other person was doing. I was head of the chambers, I
was managing it. All the cases we tried, we prepared them in a conference type
environment. So, it was easy for them. I told them I would be one phone call
away if they needed any help. After that, they found their feet. So, I didn’t
plan to be in government. I went into government also with some air of
arrogance which was quickly deflated. I must say this; I thought that those of
us outside knew more than those inside and I was proved wrong. There are a lot
of talents in government; not just in Lagos State and the power of government
is so awesome that we do ourselves a great disservice. I joined at 39 and I
thought it was too late and we must encourage many more people to join very
early. And there is no use for us to just continuously criticize the
government; that’s the easiest thing to do. But getting things done; getting
people to agree, it’s like having a party for 10 people. It is easy to serve
them but when the party becomes a thousand people, some people will come and
not eat. For some people, the food would have become cold. So, when the people
you now have to serve multiply to 21 million people, you see how difficult it
is to please everybody.
What
would you say prepared you for public office as governor of Lagos state?
Well, my
knowledge of Lagos and things that I picked up from my childhood days. I played
football across virtually the whole state. Where I didn’t play football, I went
to swim and I lived in many parts of Surulere.
I lived
at Sam Shonibare, Aina Street off
Lawanson, behind Idi-Araba and I lived at Ijeshatedo. I also lived at Aguda as
a bachelor. But as a child, I remember we used to go from Aina Street through
the canal to go and cut bamboo to make cages to trap birds. So, I knew the
flood, the canal in Idi-Araba. It helped me ultimately to address the flooding
problem that solved the River LUTH. And I knew Oshodi as I told you, apart from
going with my grandmother. When we started living in Ijesha, I used to take a
bus to Oshodi bus-stop and from Oshodi, we would trek to Airport Hotel because
we were going to swim. And we would save the money for transportation on our
way back because we would be hungry after swimming. I used to go and rent
bicycle at Bank Olemoh.; We used to go and play soccer at SOS children’s
village in Isolo, play soccer at Akerele junction at Alhaji Masha because it
used to be a big open field. We played table tennis at Sholeye Crescent, Rowe
Park and the only place you could get good bats was in a store (I have
forgotten its name) in Apapa. We would come to Marina, take the ferry or a
canoe across to go and work behind flour mill to be able to get the bat. Then
in my home, there was freedom, love and fear of God. Stealing was
unforgiveable; you couldn’t forget your classmate’s biro in your bag because
you would receive the anger of my parents. And you will never forget it. We couldn’t
go to a neighbour’s house to eat even if were hungry; my mother would be
staring at you. She would ask: are you hungry? And you would quickly say no.
You may say that they were very strict but many of my generation went through
it. It curtailed greed, built discipline and it reinforced self- denial. So, no
matter how sweet that food was and you remember the one at home, if they ask
you outside whether you were hungry, you would say, no, I have eaten. I
remember once my younger brother and I were walking through a footpath and we
found an old three pence in the sand and we cleaned it up. Of course, we
couldn’t take it home. We saw these Nupe/Kanuri women selling roasted peanuts.
We just gave her the three pence to give us peanuts and it literally bought
everything she was carrying. We sat down on the corner of the bush and ate as
much as we could, knowing that we couldn’t take it home. But as stupid as we
were, we wanted to keep what was left. We dug the sand and buried it there so
that we would go back for it later. Of course, when we went back, we could not
find it but it was better to lose the peanuts than for my mother to find it
with us. Then, the value of human lives; we didn’t see dead bodies on the
street; there wasn’t that much violence; there was respect for the dead; there
was a sense of sobriety, we were not this loud. And I think that is the
critical missing chord. When we talk about students not passing WAEC, they
didn’t pass in my time too. If all the students were passing at that time, why
did we have FSS because there were remedial colleges? All the students in the
UK too don’t pass but constantly, something was being done about it and new
opportunities were being created. So, those were the things that still help me
in decision making. There were extra classes and that’s why we decided, let’s
do Saturday classes in our public schools. And we are seeing the results
gradually but it is not enough to continue with the headline, ‘80 percent
failed’.
Would
you say that you are an accidental governor?
I don’t
think that I am quite accidental. An accident is something that you don’t have
any control of in its entirety and that’s not quite my case. I didn’t plan to
run for office but I still had a choice to say yes or to run away and from the
day I made a decision to accept the offer. I knew that it came with
consequences and the first thing was to begin to prepare myself to deal with
those consequences as best as possible. So, in
that sense, yes. I think there is
nothing esoteric about government. I think if you find the right people, the
right attitude, a clear understanding of why you are there, you can make it
work. I don’t by that suggest that there is any expertise here but we have
tried to do very simple things. We have tried to involve people. Let’s take
something as simple as maintaining roads; I want to discuss government not in
terms of only the people in public service. No they are a very small part of
the population. I want us to discuss government especially in a democracy as
something that all of us own and how much ownership we have shown. I didn’t
understand. I don’t know then as much as I know now. There are
barometers, at least, in this part, for measuring how well a government is
doing. For me, in the very beginning, the idea that a governor must visit a
road before it is fixed was extremely outlandish. How many roads could I
possibly visit? So, the way forward was, let us get a data of the roads, which
we now have. We know all our roads now but we can’t visit all the roads – over
10,000 roads. So, we set up a public works organisation that is increasingly
better equipped to deal with those problems. It has a help line that we have
made public but are people using it? That’s not even to say that if you call
today, they will come this night but they will have a log of the bad roads.
When they are making their plan in a budget, then they can fix it in. Recently,
I drove through Malu road, going to the Kirikiri Fire Service and I noticed
that at the railway junction, we had to slow down significantly because the
road had failed at the edge of the tracks and the first thing that came to my
mind was, if at the off-peak period, we had to slow down this much, what will
happen at rush hour? How much pains will our people go through? And the next thing
I did was to call the public works and say, ‘this road must be fixed before
this week is over. Give me a report that you have done it and I am going to
check. How many of such roads can I visit? But luckily, by the time I was
coming from the June 12 meeting, I saw a text on my phone that the road had
been repaired. It gives me a very good feeling that at least the discomfort of
citizens in that area has been attended to but will there be a life without
problems? No. There are so many other things I didn’t see yesterday. But, even
if we now have solutions to all the problems, we don’t also have all the
resources to fix them but I think that in the sense that people feel that
if they ask, government will respond, then we are on the way. The most prosperous
nations still have disgruntled and un-served citizens and that’s why I feel
more comfortable with the concept of an action government than an action
governor because government is institutional. You don’t need to know me, you
don’t need to see me. Even if we can’t serve you, somebody can say to you, ‘we
have received your complaints, we will come to it.’ And there is a feel-good
factor there that somebody has spoken to me very politely and those are the
things we try to continuously promote. But again, on our help lines, what do we
get? Sometimes, they are used for purposes for which they are not designed. So,
again there is need for all of us to restrain ourselves; to moderate our
expectations.
When
Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu invited you into his administration, did it ever
occur to you that you will stay this long in government and public service?
No. In
fact, I remember as I joined in 2002, the campaigns for the re-election were
rife and after re-election, he was reconstituting his cabinet. Myself as Chief
of Staff, the SSG and Head of Service were the only few people that remained
after the end of the first term and there was a lot of horse trading about who
and who was going to be in the new cabinet. I recall one night I was at the
club and one of my friends just rushed in and said “You are just sitting down here; they are already constituting
the new cabinet and your name is not on it.” And I said “So, what’s your
problem?” He said “ but you just spent nine months.” I said that was a
momentous privilege and that if the governor felt that he wanted to change his
chief of staff, I would go and thank him for giving me the opportunity to serve
for a few months and get on with my life. So, that was my attitude because
being his chief of staff wasn’t fun. Before I was chief of staff, if it rained,
I slept more but once I got into government, the rain meant a different thing
to me.
