Sanwo-Olu gives up on Apapa traffic gridlock…denies promise

 

BY KAZIE UKO

Lagos State governor, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, has finally reneged on one of his immediate campaign promises to Lagosians – to decongest the nagging Apapa traffic gridlock.

Sanwo-Olu had promised to break the intractable Apapa traffic within 60 days of his governorship during the campaigns and restated same after he had been elected governor.

But yesterday, the governor, 22 days into office, appears to have followed in the footsteps of his political forbearers and consistent with his party, APC, denied promising to get rid of the articulated vehicles that continue to congest traffic on the Oshodi-Apapa Expressway.

Sanwo-Olu, had during an interactive session with his classmates at the Executive Master of Business Administration class, University of Lagos, 1998/2000 set, at Wheatbaker Hotel in Ikoyi, in his honour as governor-elect of Lagos State, said he was determined to do the “unthinkable.”

He had promised: “The Apapa trailer issue; it’s a campaign issue; it’s very serious. I’m going to take it very seriously. I believe that it is something that we are going to solve in the first 60 days of our government. Whatever is going to be required of us, we will take them out. There is a lot of politics being played around there. But no, it cannot be the way we’ll continue to live. We cannot continue to give excuses,” he said.

Against all expectation, Sanwo-Olu yesterday gave a new twist to his promise.

“Interestingly, some media houses are actually counting down on me. They said that I mentioned, during the campaign, that I was going to clear it (Oshodi-Apapa expressway) in 60 days. I have mentioned it before, what I said was that, in 60 days, we would review what was done but that does not take the fact that even if people give you dateline, it’s because they want you to do well and they want you to be accountable to those datelines,” he said after a closed door meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari in Abuja.

The governor’s backtracking on his promise did not come to us as a surprise for we had raised a flag earlier in the day that he may not be able to fulfil it.

See https://reliablesourceng.com/2019/05/31/sanwo-olu-may-not-break-apapa-traffic-gridlock-in-60-days/

Having literally failed on his first major promise, the governor has shifted his attention to the Lagos-Badagry Expressway.

“I was on that road two days after I was sworn-in and we have gone round. I’ve been there twice now in about two weeks. So, the commitment we got was that the contractors would move into site before the end of this month and I believe that we should be closing out the discussions with the contractor over the weekend.

“We are hoping that barring any unforeseen circumstance, they should move in in another two to three weeks’ time, meaning that the clean-up and the construction of the Badagary Expressway returns back in earnest,” he promised yet again.