Former Lagos State Commissioner for Energy, Olalere Odusote, has said residents of the state want the challenges of traffic congestion and electricity to be addressed.
Naija News reports that Odusote said Lagos plays a critical role in the nation and needs to be allowed to solve its problems without relying on the federal government.
Speaking with News Central on Monday, the former commissioner stated that there was a need for Lagos to be self reliant on the issue of electricity.
Odusote urged the federal government to allow Lagos State government to manage some of its electricity infrastructure
His words: “Lagos sits on less than 0.4% of Nigerian land mass and plays host to between 12 and 13% of all Nigerians, meaning Lagos is at a critical point where it needs to solve certain problems. And that’s why Lagos typically takes the first step, not because they necessarily or politically want to, it’s almost because they are forced to do it.
“And so every Lagos state governor comes to the office and suddenly finds out that there’s a lot that they have to achieve. And so it’s not like the federal government that is in Abuja and is far removed from the people. Lagos state is very close to the people of Lagos and has to account to the people of Lagos for everything it does.
“So one of the things we found out during the campaign a couple of years ago was when we asked people what their biggest problems were. The first problem was traffic. The second problem, they said, was electricity. And so that made it clear that the government had, at that time, its work charted out for it.
“And what the government very quickly found out was where they could intervene in traffic. There was very little they could do with electricity. And so one of the charges from the governor was, what can we do to solve that problem?
“It’s basically to shift the responsibility of managing the electricity infrastructure from the federal government to the state, so the state can at least make an attempt to do something about it. And Lagos state didn’t do it on its own. It spoke to the other states, to the governor’s forum, to get their buy-in into this devolution that was intended in the constitution anyway, except for some typos that made it impossible for the states to carry out their functions. So again, to your question, the states cannot afford to do what the federal government is doing because the people are going to be asking them about what the solutions are.”
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