My ambition for the second term does not concern me, says Sanwo-Olu

The Governor of Lagos State, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, explained why he deserves a second term and his commitment to continue to execute the plan prepared by the former Governor of the State and candidate for the presidency of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu.

Why are you seeking re-election? It's really not about me alone. It's about all of us. It's about what we think our future should look like. It's about what kind of legacy we should leave behind. I want to say that over the past three years and seven months it has been a unique experience for me. Like I said earlier, I did about 90% of my time. But the beauty of it all is that we kept the faith with all the things we said we were going to do under the THEMES agenda. We haven't had time to talk about tourism, security and housing, where we have done more than 17 projects, and all the roads we have done.

We won't say we scored everything, but we will tell you that with all responsibility, we earned our rating. Year after year, we continue to achieve between 80 and 85% of our budget performance. We've doubled the size of our budget in three years, even in a rundown COVID environment. We are building roads in almost every part of the city simultaneously and we have so much energy to do even more.

So what we ask is that there are no distractions. Yes, it is politics; people will say, you know this and that, you collect this and all that. People will show you photos that are 10 or 15 years older; everything is political. But I want to tell them all, let's join hands; see a moving train; join the train. And because we have the opportunity to do it, we can go faster, better and faster for another four years and Lagosians know we can do it.

Will you say that all your accomplishments can be located in the plan that people are talking about, as it was prepared by Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu? I think these are instructive learning points that we need to highlight. In all humility, I joined the Tinubu government more than 20 years ago. I was managing director of my bank before joining Tinubu in November 2002. We had criticized the government two or three years before and I had this rare opportunity when I was appointed special adviser. From the first day of my appointment, I was in Tinubu's cabinet and saw things with my own eyes even before the end of his first term. I am a living witness to the development vision proposed by Tinubu. It's not something we gossip about; that's something we know.

So what happened at that time was that we put in place documents called LASEEDS and SEEDS documents, which are Lagos State economic development documents. We also had what we called a 10-point program; it's like what I now call the THEMES diary. The 10-point program included a revenue-generating campaign, transportation reform, public infrastructure renewal, and many other elements contained in the LASEEDS and SEEDS, which are economic documents. We set up and launched the Ehingbeti document, where you take private sector feedback and put it into your own fleshed out document and it becomes the working document you can live with moving forward.

> During Asiwaju Tinubu's eight years as governor, I worked closely with him for at least five years; one year before the end of his first term and the full four years of his second term. I was Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget, so I was one of those who drafted the document. The Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA), for example, did not simply exit space; Tinubu created LAMATA with the World Bank in 2002. I was one of those people who recruited the first group of staff who worked at LAMATA. It was one of the best World Bank transport agencies you could see anywhere in the world. And that was at the beginning of democracy in 1999; coming from a military regime where it is not an inclusive government, starting now in 1999 with a government that has the possibility of including the citizens, of listening to them and of having commitments, more like an inclusive role.

This is how the plan was drawn up and we had a 20-year development plan, which of course former Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola improved. He deleted some elements and added others. Former Governor Akinwunmi Ambode did the same. And because there is continuity in all of these things, we were able to see what the challenges of previous governments were; what are the things that you must undertake and use very quickly and have a springboard movement in your own government. These are some of the things that have helped us. We give this credit to Asiwaju Tinubu, because he was able to put together the first suite of very smart people who worked with him.

How will you react to insinuations that some influential people...