Obasanjo, Tinubu and leadership acumen

• Published date: 14 January 2023
• Publication title: Nigeria - The Nation

THERE can be no disputing the fact that every successor to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu since the latter's exit from the governorship of Lagos State after two terms in 2007 - Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN), Mr. Akinwumi Ambode and now Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu - have been men of competence and accomplishment with proven and impressive records of performance. But none of these men had hidden the fact that at the core of their successes was the firm foundation laid for the state by the pioneering administration of Asiwaju Tinubu in this dispensation between 1999 and 2007. They were all largely guided at relative levels of fidelity by a 25-year Developmental Master Plan designed by the Tinubu administration to guide the trajectory of progress in the state from 1999 -2024. And it is instructive that, in one way or the other either as members of the State Executive Council or the State Bureaucracy, they were part of the envisioning and implementation of that Master Plan. In several ways, each of these successors of Tinubu improved on the level of performance inherited from his predecessor and Lagos continues to be the better for it as she is not only the country's undisputed developmental pace setter, she has become the fourth largest economy in Africa.

Incidentally, a few weeks ago, Mr. Sanwo-Olu inaugurated the first phase of the 13km Blue Line Lagos Light Rail project designed to run from Mile 2 to Marina, a project that will transform and revolutionize the face of public transportation in the country's commercial and economic nerve center. The governor, it is worthy of note, had been part of the conception of the project right from the days of the Tinubu administration when he was a member of the State Executive Council. Work on the Red Line Lagos Light Rail Project to run from Agbado through Agege to Oyingbo is steadily ongoing. At the last Ehingbeti Lagos State Economic Summit, another initiative that can be traced to the Tinubu administration and sustained by his successors, Sanwo-Olu inaugurated the new Lagos State Development Master Plan to run from 2022-2052, which will take off from where the last plan is closely reaching its terminus. The point is that development in Lagos State over the last 25 years has been planned, progressive, systematic, and continuous.

The big question is, as the first President of Nigeria in this dispensation between 1999 and 2007, did General Olusegun Obasanjo lay a solid and firm foundation for the continuous and sustained progress of Nigeria after him and did he lay a viable pathway for administrations succeeding him to follow and achieve success? The answer is a resounding no. Yet, in his infamous and characteristically verbose New Year open letter to Nigerians in which he endorsed...