Sanwo-Olu Absent At Lagos Governorship Debate As Candidates Pitch Ideas To Voters

• Sanwo-Olu was a no-show at the Lagos governorship debate on Sunday.

• He had vowed to boycott the event, claiming that he could not share the stage with the PDP candidate, whom he accused of fomenting violence in the state.

• The Lagos governor was the only absentee on Sunday as three candidates showed up to pitch their ideas to voters.

Eko Hot Blog reports that Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour of the Labour Party (LP), Olufunso Doherty of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), and Abdul-Azeez Adediran of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) participated in a debate organised for governorship candidates in Lagos on Sunday night.

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Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu was the only invited candidate who refused to show up at ThePlatform debate moderated by Dr Victor Oladokun.

He had notified the organisers, The Covenant Nation, led by Pastor Poju Oyemade, on Saturday that he would not attend because he could not share the podium with the PDP candidate.

The governor accused Adediran, popularly known as Jandor, and his party of having disregard for human lives.

At the debate on Sunday, the present governorship candidates pitched their ideas to Lagos voters.

Asked how he will address the problems of thuggery and transportation in the state, Rhodes-Vivour revealed plans to eradicate the “Agbero” system, which he said has created safety hazards in Lagos state over time.

“On road safety in Lagos state, we will not accept the ‘Agbero’ system, which has created a lot of safety hazards in the state,” he said.

“We need to train our road enforcement agents and we will also need to ensure that the state set its clear policy on not accepting the Agbero system. All of these, you can only enforce where a system is moving smoothly.

“Our own focus is making sure that we are back on a system that is working smoothly. We are also going to have digital surveillance all across the state so that we can enforce with evidence, not just hearsay anymore.

“So, the enforcement officers that do not step up to their responsibilities can actually be held accountable and we can hold them to account with evidence.”

The LP governorship candidate also noted that the rail transportation system that the state is currently building must take into consideration the moving of cargoes.

“The fact that we are moving so many containers by road is damaging our roads and it’s creating very low life expectancy for the roads we have and also leading to accidents like what happened today [a container fell at Ojuelegba and killed nine bus passengers on Sunday],” he said.

On his part, the ADC candidate said he plans to bring the Lagos waterways into the transportation system in the state to fix the transportation challenges.

“We will bring our waterways into the multimodal transportation system, do more by instilling law and order on our roads,” Doherty said.

Also, the PDP candidate said his administration will fix Lagos transportation issues by building flyover at intersections, adding that the travel time of containers will be restricted to prevent accidents.

“We will build flyovers at intersections and alternative routes for commuters, go back to restricting the travel time of containers in Lagos and free up Lagos by building a park-and-ride so people can ferry from the mainland to the island,” he said.

On security, Jandor said he plans to rehabilitate the “area boys.”

“Convert ‘area boys’ to positive tools – garage management officials that support the safety and security of commuters,” the PDP candidate said.

“Relying on information from people by buying their trust. It is about time we buy the trust of the citizens of Lagos by curbing insecurity together.”

On his part, Rhodes-Vivour said his administration will give the “area boys” employability skills and create a special force to protect citizens from bad cops.

“We will ensure we give them employability skills and domicile this at the local governments, empower the local government to be security gathering agencies for Lagos state,” the LP candidate said.

“We will have a special force with the Director of Public Prosecution to ensure there is a hotline for harassed victims and actively go against lawlessness.”

Doherty also weighed in on the threats of bad policemen to residents.

FURTHER READING

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“We need to ensure that the welfare of security agencies are taken care of. We need to prosecute and publicly show that we have dealt with defaulting security officers,” the ADC candidate said.

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