Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour Criticises Lagos Governance and State Spending

Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, the Labour Party’s gubernatorial candidate in Lagos State’s 2023 election, has voiced strong concerns over the state’s governance. Speaking in an interview monitored by Radio Now’s Newsdesk, he criticised the excessive spending on fines, private legal fees, and consultants, calling these practices a major issue in the administration.

“All of last year, we’ve been doing our best to bring to light the gross, flagrant use of the Commonwealth of Lagos. We brought to light how they were budgeting billions for fines. We brought to light the fact that 200 million was in their documentation for some loose private legal expenses. We brought to light the amount of money that’s being spent on consultants relative to what can be spent. I mean, they’re spending billions to hire consultants to consult on bus lanes and bus routes when they can do it for so much less. Also, the government is still running a very opaque system in terms of its accounting, its finances. It takes a lot to even just be able to get line-by-line items or costings for what things actually cost and how they are running the government in Lagos. I mean, when you look at the blue line, the things that they take pride in, the blue line, the red line, look at how long it took for it to be delivered. Look at how much it costs per kilometre relative to how much they said it would cost or relative to how much it costs in other countries like Ethiopia or Kenya. You see that we are not getting the best deal.”

Mr. Rhodes-Vivour highlighted the poor state of local government infrastructure, pointing out that many areas still lack basic amenities. 

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“The inner roads for local governments, extremely poor, extremely, extremely poor. You go into parts of Lagos, Lagos is not just Lake Kitu, Ikeja. Going to a limo show, going to a German fellow to go into a job. It’s like we’re in the rural areas where like, it’s like we’re in the village. There’s nothing like Lagos, right? Or nothing like what Lagos is supposed to be. Also, I’ll say the inner roads, we’ll talk about our education system, the quality of our schools, the schools that are available for children in this place, they’re a big problem. And also, they’re not distributed evenly. You find schools are concentrated in places, right? The idea of development in the state is to allow for each local government, each local government to be as independent as possible. So all your services, your education, your healthcare, all your services are within your local government. You don’t need to go out for it, right? So you find there are several communities that don’t have access to schools, good schools, private, public schools. We’re not even talking about private schools, public schools in their local government. So I’ve talked about education, healthcare, and then still waste management Our waste management is directly tied to the flooding, which is directly tied to why they’re demolishing buildings, which is directly tied to the pollution in the state.”

While responding to a recent statement by president Bola Tinubu about Nigeria’s future, he argued that the president’s words were disconnected from the everyday struggles of ordinary Nigerians, who continue to face hardships due to what he sees as lavish government spending.

“I would be able to take what the president is saying if he was also experiencing Nigeria for what it is to the common man today. You have hard-working Nigerians, hard-working market women, hard-working people all over the country that are experiencing extreme levels of hardship. Meanwhile you are seeing the budget where there is almost 22 billion budgeted to maintain the state house, another 4.6 billion budgeted to buy new bulletproof vehicles.So you literally see a political class that’s being pampered with the commonwealth of our country. Meanwhile, the people are experiencing unprecedented hardship. Today, over 70 percent of people’s income is spent on transportation and food.They’ve not even started to think about how they’re going to be able to afford accommodation. We have a situation where there is a culture of wastefulness, extravagance that does not reflect the dire economic situation that the same president is pushing out that needs to be reformed. Reformation should be in the interest of the people.”