Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, speaks on what the people
of the state should expect about the Red and Blue line rails, Lagos
Urban Transport Master Plan, as well as ongoing projects in different
parts of the state, security, and 2023 governorship elections, among
other issues, in this interview monitored on Channels Television’s
Sunrise Daily by OLUSEGUN OLANREWAJU
You recently campaigned for former Lagos State governor, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, what about you? What is happening to your second term?
As we speak, we have done two-thirds of our time; it is about 66.7 per cent, as we count it every day. The field is not open yet; the race has not been declared open, but for me, it is about ensuring that these four
years I have promised my citizens, I put every bit of my sweat into it.
Are you going to vie for a second term?
I will let the citizens speak. I will ask and consult. I will ask them what they think about it. Those are some of the things, and that is how you get it done. Keep your focus on it, try and finish very strong. When
it is time for us to do all the politicking, we will do it. It is available for you. The constitution says you can do a second term.
What are the chances?
I think the citizens will do, and I think we are doing a very good job. I dare to say so. I think the citizens know what they will be missing if they don’t let us continue and ramp up all of the things we are doing.
That sounds like one good term deserves another Well, then, you can say that.
What is the focus of Lagos, concerning the Red and Blue line rails? There is a strong master plan, which we call the Lagos Urban Transport Master Plan. We figured out that a massive city like Lagos needs to have an efficient transportation system, which is naturally blessed with water. We have bus transportation. We are planning to have extensive waterway transportation. And, of course, rail transportation. It is only
when you can utilize all the components of transportation that you can run a megacity like this type. A lot of people usually say that it is only Lagos that doesn’t have a metro system or a rail system.
I was in government before we started the BRT. It is the same concept on the road. The high-capacity buses are expected to move a lot of people on dedicated corridors so that people can get to their destination
quicker. On waterway infrastructure, we are dredging, building 17 stations, small terminals. We have acquired about 22 ferries; 50-seater, 40-seater, and 30-seater, to move people around waterways. These are a bit quicker to fix, and we are doing that. But rail line has been the
real big one we are struggling with. Lagos is the only sub-national anywhere in the world that is being audacious to build a rail infrastructure by itself. People will say Lagos doesn’t have a rail
line; they say we should go and check Ethiopia, Egypt, and Senegal. I say to them, those are countries; you are right. In Addis Ababa, it is the country of Ethiopia that is building it. So, we need to have our
mark there. While growing up, we missed it at some point; about 30, 40 years ago. So, we have been very audacious in this conversation, and we said let us do this. It was during the Babatunde Fashola government that
we started it, and I need to give credit to that. We started in 2008 and 2009. What we know today as the Red Line was the existing alignment that we thought would be an easier path at that time, but it was
difficult getting Federal Government approval, because those were Federal Government lines. So, we said, let us go through a difficult one, which is the Blue Line. The Blue line is the one that we have on
the Lagos-Badagry Express Road. What we said to the Federal Government then was that we are going to rebuild the road from four lanes to 10 lanes, and we took a wide alignment to keep a rail track in the middle.
If you go on that express road; that is why the rail tracks are in the middle. But we took a wide alignment on that, and we are building five lanes here, five lanes there. I am about to complete that road now, from
Orile to Okokomaiko. It has been very difficult, but the contractor is rounding off now, and we are also going to hand it over. On that rail corridor, we have the Blue Line. We have done the first phase, which is from Mile 2 to Marina. Our current administration is very lucky because we are starting the Red Line from the scratch. That would be handed over at the end of this year. The Red Line is the existing rail corridor that uses the Lagos-Ibadan alignment, which belongs to the Federal Government. We looked at the composition of the track and checked the need to have a rail track that fits the kind of intra-city train we want. We have a standard gauge. We are building eight stations in all the corridors from Alagbado, Iju, Agege, Ikeja, Oshodi, Mushin, Yaba,
and Ebute-Meta, which is the first phase of it. The second phase of it will now get to Iddo and eventually terminate at Marina. It will do a lagoon crossing to Marina. So, it is Phase 1 of the Redline project that
is the talk of the town now. We have started, and we are going to complete it. We will also be completing the Blue line. So, what Lagosians are expecting from us would be actively working trains; two rail lines by the third or fourth quarter of the year.
A lot of people that have to do business in Lagos wonder if it is
goodbye to the days of the infamous Lagos traffic…
That is the plan and the vision. How efficient are people on the road?
How much journey time can we reduce? How do we get our people a little
bit more efficient on the road? Time is money, and we need to move
millions of people from one corridor to the other. So, the vision is to
reduce traffic time, reduce gridlocks on the road, and be able to do
what we call better journey planning, where you can predict a journey
that can take you 25 minutes or 30 minutes. The Red and Blue lines are
just two of the seven rail lines talking about the master plan. It
definitely will cost some infrastructure, and it is going to cost some
Lagosians one thing or the other.
Do you have an idea of the numbers for the rail infrastructure?
For the rail infrastructure, we are borrowing, and that is why we are
excited that we will complete it because we have all the financing to
get to the end of it. In terms of what we are looking at, we are looking
at N150 billion to be able to complete both the Red Line and the Blue
Line. That is like the kind of bucket number we have been able to raise
from the debt market.
Don’t we need to be worried about the maintenance of the rail lines?
We need to, and that is part of the conversations we had during our trip
last week. We went to a city called Istanbul in Turkey. I was very
impressed with the level of rail infrastructure there. We looked at a
city that has similar demography as Lagos with a huge population.
Istanbul is the biggest in terms of population, almost 17 to 18 million,
in Europe, and it has a massive metro infrastructure of over 150
stations. We met with the leadership team of the metro line. Last
Thursday, I met with the Turkish Ambassador, to also ventilate and
validate that relationship. One of the things they have said to us is
that we can have that city relationship where training can occur because
they have a huge training facility where you can send people down to
train them. Chinese are also willing to take in a lot of people back to
China for training. We need to commence the training five or six months
before the actual activities start so that they can know how to maintain
some of these assets. We will also have in-house on-boarding skills that
will need to come in. We need to quickly ramp up the ability and
capacity to be able to train our citizens so that they can own it
because we are going to have massive stabling yards to park the trains
and do quick fixes. There will be general maintenance; there will be
routine maintenance. So, there is a massive training that will happen.
We need to train people who are fitters. Those are the kind of soft
skills that we need to ramp up and put in a position to fix.
Safety is critical in this. What are you doing about that?
For an intra-city infrastructure like this, we need to build what we
call overpasses. If you go around Lagos now, there is a bit of traffic
in some places. I apologise to my citizens. It is because of the kind of
infrastructure that the rail requires. A train will move on a grid; it
is expensive to put them at an elevated level. It is a lot cheaper when
we build overpasses for vehicles. If you go to Oyingbo, where we call
Old Yaba Road, we are building a proper vehicular bridge, so that the
train can move underneath the bridge. Vehicles and humans will move on
top and trains will go underneath. If you go to Yaba, we are building
another overpass there, from Tejuosho into Yaba. We are going to
complete it before the end of the year so that the train can go
underneath. If you go to Mushin, if you are crossing from Mushin-Ojurin
to Fadeyi, we are building an overpass. Same in Ikeja and Ayoola Coker
in Iju. We are concurrently building five overpasses; these are brand
new vehicular bridges so that when the trains are moving, we are not
stopping vehicles manually to let the trains pass.
How much do you think it is going to cost to be able to ride on these
trains?
As a government, we’ll need to do what we call heavy-lifting. There is
no private investor that will come and help you develop your
infrastructure. So, the government must carry the burden of building the
track, building train stations, and all of the communication gadgets
that come with it. In some cases, the government also has to be able to
deal with rolling stock, just so it can stimulate the private sector to
come in. So, what we see as part of our funding is that we see it as if
we are building a road from one part of the city to another. That is why
we can make those investments to build train tracks, terminals and
ensure that our citizens have that. Those are some things on the balance
sheet of the state, which we cannot pass to the citizens. The kind of
things that will be passed on will be the maintenance cost when
operations begin. And these include: how long will it cost to truly
maintain a train and its movement to and fro, the staff salary,
lightening, and such like. Those are the numbers we will require, as we
will not need to ask them to do cost recovery on an already constructed
infrastructure. It will not come at anything that will kill the budget.
By the way, these are long-term investments; they don’t have a five-year
depreciation like a vehicle that you ought to do cost recovery for over
five or six years. A train is set for 30 to 40 years, so you have a
longer cost recovery. It is not something you need to be able to kill
your citizens for. Where subsidy can come in is where you have to look,
and that may be the time of the day when there is a rush hour, as seen
in every part of the world. The cost could come at a slight premium so
that if you don’t need to travel at the time when people are truly
rushing to get to work or school, you can stay back for an 11am train
ride, rather than rushing alongside people in-transit for a 7am ride,
which is traffic time. Those are some of the fare matrices that can be
put into it to make sure that it is accessible and affordable. You know
affordability is critical because it is a mass movement that reduces
total cost. One car on the train can take up to 150 to 200 people in 15
to 20 minutes maximum. So, people can sit, stand and people can hop in
and hop off; so it won’t take so much. We believe that the cost will
come down significantly for the citizens. I do not think they will be
breaking their bank. I can assure you it will be very affordable and
very accessible. On top of my head, I can say it might not be more than
N200 or N250. It probably would not be more than that. I really can’t be
exact on the figure, because the fare structure would be where you are
joining to where you are alighting. But typically, it will not be more
than what you are running on regular BRT lines today. For it to be
accessible, affordability is critical, for people to want to make it a
better option. A train ride will be quicker; instead of you staying one
hour on the road, it is going to take you 20 minutes or 25 minutes by
train. Affordability is critical, and I can assure you that, certainly,
it cannot be in thousands, like saying you are going to use N5,000 on a
train journey. It will still be in your regular N200, N300 journey, and
that is the kind of numbers we are looking at. If our operators say it
is more expensive to operate, we can do a financing mind trick and give
them a longer tenure time to defray cost but keep it affordable for our
citizens, because it is for them and all about them.
What exactly is the state of the road between Mile 2 and Badagry, and
what are the plans for that part of the road?
As I did mention, we are doing a 10-lane highway on that corridor. We
are completing the stretch to Okokomaiko before the end of the second
quarter this year, which is a rigid pavement with four bridges that
cross Alakija, Trade Fair, LASU Junction, and an overpass which people
can use to get to the other side. The stretch from Mile 2 to Okokomaiko
will be completed fully; that is about 18 kilometers to 20 kilometers.
The Federal Government is working with a construction company to fix the
stretch from Okokomaiko to Agbara and there is on-site activity on that
part as we speak. Once we get to Agbara to Badagry, as soon as the
Federal Government is done with the construction, it is a smooth road.
The only part remaining is from Okokomaiko to Agbara, which the Federal
The government is handling it. The entire Badagry stretch is a Federal
Government road; is part of the West African International corridor.
We took an audacious position several years ago to rebuild that road,
and we took it from a four-lane and we have developed it into a 10-lane
highway. We have incredible and remarkable work on that road. There are
other things we are doing for Badagry. Our citizens in that part need to
know that I am building three jetties in Badagry to fully utilize the
waterways from there to other parts of Lagos. Two of the jetties have
been completed and people have started using them. The third one, which
we called the Badagry-Marina, will also be completed very soon. So, we
have three jetties already in Badagry, meaning that you can move from a
place like Ikoyi-Falomo and Liverpool in Apapa and straight to Badagry
in about 20 to 25 minutes.
Residents in Ikorodu are raising concerns about ongoing projects …
We are doing several projects in Ikorodu. Oba Sekumade Road is around 80
to 90 per cent completed; it is a rigid pavement. The thickness of the
concrete is higher. We are building massive drainage on that corridor
because the road usually gets flooded. The drainage part is completed,
and we are going to be commissioning the road by the second quarter of
this year. Agric-Isawo Road is a knotty one; it is a long stretch of
road that goes all the way towards the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. One of
the things we did not do very well, was that we took a wider
right-of-way. Meaning that we are trying to build three-three lanes on
either side, whereas we need only two-two lanes. The contractor is back
on track there; the road has been stabilized. I fear that they need to
ensure that they quickly put asphalt on it before the rain comes on. It
is only on Agric-Isawo Road that I get called out. We are going to
complete it as well. At Igbogbo-Baiyeku Road, a similar contractor is
also on it, and we are also assuring them that these are projects that
are of great concern to us. We have done Ijede Road; we have completed
and handed it over. We have done the one going to Gberigbe, and we have
handed that one over too. Ikorodu is such a massive sub-urban area with
tiny roads. We are just opening up, and we are making things available
there. In Ikorodu as well, we have three jetties that we have built for
them to give them alternatives of moving by the waterways from Ipakodo
Jetty to Ibeshe Jetty. People can also come in from other parts of the
city, using the waterways infrastructure that we have. So, I can assure
my Ikorodu citizens that they know we are on-site, they know our
contractors are working, we just have to push them a bit more so that
they can complete the Agric-Isawo Road. On the road towards Shagamu, we
are doing reconstruction at a place called Ita-Elewa, which has a knotty
roundabout.
The debt stock of Lagos, since 2015, has more than doubled. How is the
government financing these capital projects? Is it out of pocket or
borrowing?
We are pushing on our IGR, our ability to raise revenue internally, and
we are also talking to our lenders. And the beauty of the kind of
lending model is that we are looking at local borrowing at single digit
for 10 to 15 years. So, if you are looking at borrowing for
infrastructure that will last you 20 to 30 years and you are doing a
complete match in terms of 10 to 15 years of borrowing at single-digit,
talking of eight or nine per cent, it is incredible, and you cannot miss
it. Failure to do that and to take the difficult decision now, inflation
will catch up with you one year down the line. A road that you are
supposed to build today at N1 billion in one year turns to N3bn. So, you
need to take a that hard decision now, lock it in, make sure that you do
not have a variation on any of those numbers, and keep it straight with
the contractor.
What is the update on the proposed Fourth Mainland Bridge?
That is also an interesting one; that is one of the legacies that we are
also going to be leaving before the end of our four-year tenure. Where
we are is that we have paid the final bid for the consulting. We are
doing a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model with the Fourth Mainland
Bridge, and we have gotten concessionaires. We are at the last stage
now. We started with 35 companies, showing interest in building the
bridge. We have reduced that to three now. So, with the final three now,
we are at the final of the big process to be able to identify the
concessionaires. The Fourth Mainland Bridge is a 37-kilometre ring-road
from the Lekki-Ajah axis, crossing the water, going all the way behind
Ikorodu, and eventually terminating on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. It is
like an M25 out of London. It is massive. We believe that with that
construction, a lot of intermodal movement will happen very quickly in
Lagos. We believe that we will identify a concessionaire and do
ground-breaking before the end of the second quarter. I believe that we
will identify the concessionaire before the end of the first quarter,
and do the ground-breaking before the middle of this year. Once the
ground-breaking is done, then we can begin to see the development. It
will probably take two to three years or thereabouts for the
construction.
Big cities deal with security issues, traffic, robbery, and so on. What
is the thinking about ensuring these kinds of challenges don’t pop up
any further?
That is why we are building what we call the Smart City component. In
our Smart City infrastructure, we are trying to escalate CCTVs. When
people know there is a high chance that they get caught, or there is a
back-end solution where you can review what had happened, people will
know that they need to desist from doing such. So, what we are doing is
that we are trying to ensure that once we build the fiber
infrastructure, we will have CCTV. We are going to 2,000, but we have
deployed like 250 right now, and it is majorly for traffic management
and the kind of the things you mentioned now, where we can give the
information to the Nigerian Police for them to track on.
