Former Lagos state governor
and now Minister of Works, Power and Housing, Babatunde Fashola in this
interview with The News magazine went down memory lane on how he met with his
predecessor and political godfather, Bola Tinubu. According to Fashola, he met
with Tinubu sometime in 1990 or 1991.
That is an invitation to walk
down memory lane. I think it must have been 1990 or 1991. He was treasurer in
Mobil, then. His office was at the Bookshop House at CMS on Odunlami Street. I
didn’t directly meet him. I had seen him at parties, but we never met.
At that time, I was a senior
associate at the law firm of Sofunde, Osakwe, Ogundipe and Belgore, where I was
practising. Wale Tinubu, his nephew, came to join the law firm, then. He was
always mentioning “Uncle Bola”, and one day, he said: ‘’let’s go and see my
uncle.” We got there and went out to lunch with him. That was then I could say
we formally met. From then on, he would consult us on legal issues and we would
help and give him advice. Sometimes, he would just come and say. “See we have
this issue, what do you lawyers think?” We ran around and he would always give
us pocket money. I think one thing that left some impressions on me was his
commitment to his staff and that was symbolised by what I witnessed on a
particular day after the Sallah celebration. He brought Sallah meat to the
office and supervised its sharing from floor to floor. As exalted as his office
was, he was concerned to ensure that those who could not come to his house,
even to the lowest driver, got part of the Sallah meat. I recalled that after
the sharing of the meat, he sent someone to aggregate how much it would cost to
buy soft drink for everybody and equally distributed money to them. The
incident left an impression on me and what became a practice when I started
observing the killing of rams for Sallah. For me, it speaks of his concern
about those working for him"he said
Fashola says he is now under
more pressure to become a better leader even after Tinubu had described him as
one of his achievement
"Well, there are many
ways to look at it. For me, that kind of statement coming from him puts more
pressure on me. I thought that I had seen all the pressure that could come from
this experience to be governor of Lagos State. That adds pressure on me in no
small measure. I think how I became governor is public knowledge. Nothing could
put pressure on me than the commitment in pursuit of his decision in 2006 that
I was the candidate he was endorsing for governor and the cost in terms of
stress, disagreement, fights and long-draw emotional arguments. Of course,
immediately I won the election, the biggest pressure was to ensure that I
didn’t regret the decision. One, the people of Lagos State could have said: “We
didn’t know the man you have brought and he has turned the state upside down.”
There are other sides to it that I would want to keep to myself. As I have said
time and time again, he should sit down and write his memoirs so that people
may know the story of that election. This is what he should use to explain to
Lagosians the offers, the counter-offers and choices he made and why he, as it
were, went for broke. The question to ask is: What was his abiding commitment
after eight years as well as questions on who became governor, and who did not?
But, in terms of a next step from there, it is to say that it is an enriching
experience for our democracy, and not simply about me. It is also about
institution building in the sense that I have continued to compare our 13-year
journey in spite of its twists and turns with those that we seek to benchmark
ourselves against.
No comments:
Post a Comment