EXPERIENCE, GOVERNANCE AND THE ROAMING CHAMELEONS IN LAGOS
Betty Osunbor
Lagos is gearing up for the 2023 Gubernatorial Election. Expectations
and excitement are quite high, perhaps one of the highest witnessed in recent electoral era.
Come March 11, electorates will make a delicate decision with their Permanent Voter Cards that will shape their lives for the next four years.
This decision could in fact either make or mar their future depending on how their chosen leader turns out.
Expectedly, all eyes are on the major contenders who have been making promises and sharing lofty ideas about what they will make of the mandate if given at various rallies and campaigns.
There is however an urgent need to pay careful attention to the issue of experience in assessing the candidates. This is crucial to save the Centre of Excellence as Lagos is called from the dark cloud hovering over it. Voting a candidate with no experience will return the Commercial Hub of the nation to the stone age.
Lagos State is quite sophisticated and must be handled by capable and experienced hands. It can’t afford an amateur seeking to experiment or test run. It can not be handed over to an inexperienced individual whose tribal sentiment becloud political ambition as that can truncate the gains recorded in line with the blueprint of a better and developed Lagos.
Anyone coming to lead Lagos must show clear track records of leadership and cognate professional competences and experience either from the public or private sector. Lagos doesn’t deserve anything lower.
So let’s take a brief dig into the lives of key candidates seeking to unseat the governor in Lagos. A Governor Sanwo-Olu who prior to his rich experience for four years had even headed a strategic agency like the LSDPC asides his corporate career as a banker.
Gbadebo Chinedu Rhodes Vivour was born with a silver spoon but checks on his almost four decades shows he hasn’t done anything tangible asides academic degrees.
If there’s anything about him at all then it has to be his growing stature as a chameleon with questionable agenda.
He has been in the news lately but for the wrong reasons.
He is well known as a lazy opportunist with no clear direction and will do anything to be in the face of the people. He keeps hopping from one sphere to another without succeeding in any.
Gbadebo or Chinedu his first name which he dropped for political correctness started out as an armchair activist with no bite. When he realised he has no future whatsoever, he jumped into politics hoping to make it a career, unfortunately for him, he has always started on a wrong foot.
Just like a chameleon, Gbadebo keeps hopping about. First, he started his political ambition with KOWA party where he contested for Chairmanship and lost woefully. Desperate to grab power at all costs without learning through the ropes, he swiftly jumped ship and joined the PDP. Again, he contested for Senate under the Poeples Democratic Party and lost again.
Hoping to ride on the Peter Obi hype, Gbadebo landed in Labour Party to vie for the apex seat in Lagos State with no plan or experience in administration and governance. Little wonders he keeps making spurious unrealistic claims and promises.
Professionally, for one who claims to be an architect with certificates from ivy league schools, he hasn’t pinpoint any single significant architectural or building project that got his professional inputs.
Olajide Adediran Known as jandor was recently called an ordinary camera who wants to govern Lagos by a blunt straight-looking former lagos state governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola, because has no experience in governance.
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Fashola couldn’t have been wrong. Even Jandor came out to admit Fashola was his boss. So, BRF knows better.
Jandor worked with Fashola as part of the camera crew who followed the Lagos governor about. This followed his stint at Lagos television. Is that enough experience to govern Lagos?
He had earlier formed lagos4lagos movement which unfortunately yielded no electoral value or clout. He is said to be naive and lacks basic people management skills little wonders top members of his movement on daily basis kept leaving.
It is crystal clear both Gbadebo and Jandor have lacks significant experience either in administration or governance or professionally and it will be a disaster to allow a clueless gamble or test run with Lagos, a state which grew its meagre IGR from 500 million to almost 50 billion within 20 years, a state already on the path of greatness and responsible for the destiny of over 20 million residents.
