CITIZENS COMPASS-—Mr. Gbadebo Patrick Rhodes-Vivour, also known as GRV, an Architect was the Lagos State Gubernatorial Candidate of the Labour Party,(LP) in the 2023 general election. He came second in the election behind Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu who was the All Progressives Congress (APC) Candidate .
In this interview with some media executives in Lagos, he speaks about the ideal leadership as a position of service not gloating about punishing people, the 2027 general elections, the type of Lagos State that he dreams of among other issues.
Excerpts:
During the 2023 governorship election, the issue of ethnicity came into the front burner with many labelling you as an Igbo despite your Yoruba origin. Also, recently some bus stops’ names were changed using this ethnic card.
Can you take us through the experience and how does that experience define Lagos of your dream ?
You see, the main issue here is that the majority or many people are being plagued by persons that are taking advantage of their lack of understanding of what is actually happening. All of these people every time they start these agitations and push for these narratives, that are just there to distract you. It is a classic divide and conquer strategy.
If I get all of you to be hitting your heads and fighting yourselves, you can never ask me about why you spent two billion Naira on air freshener
You cannot ask me about why I am spending billions on consultancy. You will not talk about why and how a company got the contracts for Coastal Road without any proper bidding or transparency situation or how Seyi Tinubu is also on the board. You wouldn’t talk about any of those things.
So it does two things. One, the people that are supposed to come together and demand good governance, that is Yoruba and Igbo, which make up the majority of the population in Lagos State are now fighting themselves or arguing and so, they cannot come together to demand good governance. Second, they are not talking about the issues that actually matter to them.
When we really think about it, at the end of the day, does the renaming of streets really matter compared with how much fuel is? Compared to how much is paid for electricity? Compared with how messed up your gutters are and how they are not covered? Compared with the fact that none of these people leading us can send their children to the same public school they went to when they were younger? Meanwhile, they got solid education in those places. All of these people, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, Bola Tinubu when they were growing up, at least for the ones that grew up in Lagos, when they opened the tap, water was coming out. Well, for the last two decades, despite hundreds of millions of dollars collected in aid to be able to deliver pipe-borne water, it becomes difficult, even the water corporation doesn’t have water.
This is a fact, I am not just talking. I talk about this all the time. My father’s house in Ikeja, one of our neighbours whose building separates us is close to the water corporation and I remember at a time the borehole collapsed, they brought in a huge bill because they had to excavate the whole borehole, redo it again, go deep, get the pumping machine out, so the cost was so high. And then we thought, you know, we are neighbours to the water corporation, why don’t we just go and talk to them and see if we can connect water to them? We went there, and they don’t have water.
So, these are the issues that affect your life. If we have pipe-borne water in Lagos State, first of all, the pollution in terms of plastics will reduce significantly. Second, cholera epidemics will reduce significantly, and a lot of typhoid and other diseases that are linked to not having clean, processed water will also reduce significantly. These are issues that affect people, and their children.
But instead, they sowed that discord, so that you are talking about things that do not affect your life. It does not affect how much the fish is on your table costs, it does not affect how much is the rice your wife is buying, it does not affect the school fees that you have to pay in September.
You are talking about street naming, it is a strategy. I implore Lagosians and Nigerians at large to understand and see through this strategy. Because it’s a game. They are playing a game. After the elections, we go back to living our regular lives, where we are doing business with people of different tribes. But the suffering of bad governance follows us. Meanwhile, they are enjoying themselves, they are spoilt by the country.
You say that you came into a country and you met a country that was bankrupt, almost bankrupt, broke and poor, that’s what they’re saying. At the same time, you use N20 billion to build, renovate and finish the vice president’s house. You gave a contract of God knows how many trillions for Coastal Road when all the roads linking the farms to urban centres are deplorable, which is why 60 per cent of goods that come from farms to urban centres spoil and rot, which is also why the transport cost is so high, and which then determines food inflation?
The same situation has created a crisis of cost of living that Nigerians have seen, that they have not experienced in the last 20, 30 years. These are the real life issues. But they do not want you to talk about them. That’s why they’ll talk about language, they’ll talk about the names of streets, they’ll talk about who is living where and who is not accepted. But I will tell you something, you see Lagos is peculiar, there’s no other state like Lagos in Nigeria.
There is no other state. The indigenes of Lagos are peculiar. They are peculiar human beings, not because they are any less Yoruba than their brothers that come from Ife, but their exposures are different. In Lagos, we have a situation where we had a group of people that were never conquered by Oyo, Ibadan or Ondo or any of those people, they have created their own system.
Then Lagos was the place where, from Badagry ports, Lagos ports, many people were kidnapped from here, and shipped abroad as slaves or enslaved because nobody was born a slave. There were so many neighbours that were capturing their neighbours and exploiting them. They were stealing human beings. And it went through the ports of Lagos. That way, many people that were elite at the time made a lot of money, they benefited. Now, these people were dealing with the Europeans, Portuguese, British and Spanish, all of them. That’s another level of exposure. You are seeing the white man, you are understanding the white man. All of a sudden, a person that has been that exposed is not thinking the way a tribal person is thinking because they are now interfacing with the world.
If all of us go to England today and we are experiencing racism from the British men, we are no longer calling ourselves Igbo or Yoruba, we are now black, we are now Nigerians. Yes, that is because we have been exposed to a bigger identity. Do you understand? Then the enslaved people that were able to get their freedom, fight for their freedom through any way, through any form, returned and many them settled in Lagos. When they came, the monarchy and everything gave them pieces of land. “Okay, go and develop these places”. These people now came with all their experience, in terms of their architecture, their trade, their education, their knowledge and came into Lagos again, as a third series of exposure.
All of the South West did not experience that exposure. And then you now have a situation where it was now colonialism that came in. You now have a situation where the governance of Nigeria was based in Lagos. So you had politicians coming from everywhere to talk about the matters of Nigeria in Lagos. Another level of exposure. People were interacting with people from all over Nigeria. Interacting with people from all over became the norm.
Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe had this place as his base. You were dealing with people. Chief Obafemi Awolowo from Ogun State was in Lagos doing his politics. Lagos was the capital, investment had poured in, and then you had the fight for Independence. The motion was still moved in this same Lagos. Lagos had been a colony way before there was a South-West. Lagos itself was a protectorate. It was first a protectorate before it was called a colony. Before all the ancillary lands that we now got after Mobolaji Johnson was able to get the freedom of Lagos again, I mean with the support of people like the late Oba Oyekan and so many others.
We have been leading and ruling ourselves before there was a Nigeria, before there was a South-West, so why should we now be under someone else?
And they fought for their independence and to get that independence, they gave up all their rights on Wemabod. Despite a lot of investments on Lagos land, they gave up their interests and their rights in Wemabod in exchange for being independent. That’s how important it was for them to be independent.
So I highlighted several exposures, it is these exposures that made the indigenous people of Lagos create the environment of Lagos that welcomed the world of Nigeria. And it is that welcoming of the world of Nigeria that Lagos became the commercial capital of Nigeria and one of the largest economic city in Nigeria. This is because if you come here, you feel safe. The indigenes welcome you, they want to do business, they are welcoming, they are accommodating, that is what it is to be an indigene of Lagos.
So when you see all of these things, you start to see the nature of Lagos changing. Why? This is because Lagosians are not at the helm of affairs, they are not. Everything that you are seeing today, all this talk, ‘we name these streets,’ I mean, go and look at the names, go and look at people behind them, I’m sorry, they don’t carry this story. They don’t carry this legacy. Their grandfathers have not passed these values down. They are coming with values and exposure system that is very different, that is what is now changing.
Because of all of these things they feel is the right thing, then
Let them create another Lagos in their respective states and let us see if it worths it. Go back to your state and be this hostile to people and see if people will come with investments
Talk of just 100 people in Nigeria, wealthy people, even northerners, they must have a base in Lagos. Why? It is because the indigenous people of Lagos, from the Awori to the Egun to the Saros, the people that make up Lagos as what it is, to the Benin, to the Tapa, have gone through struggle. You noted what I said that if all of us go abroad, and we meet a white person that has come to where we stay and beating and beating us, after a while, we would not see ourselves as Igbo, Yoruba or Hausa, we are now, in a struggle, see ourselves as black. Now that is what Lagosians own and that is the identity that created the city state called Lagos and unfortunately now, a lot of these are being usurped because most of the people living in Lagos, fanning this ethnic and tribal thing, they are not Lagosians.
This is not the first president we have had that is Yoruba. We had Obasanjo, was anybody doing any of these at the time? Nobody. Obasanjo was our president. Did we have this kind of ethnic strife? No, but for one man’s ambition, they will go to any length to just divide, dehumanise, insult, belittle, hurt. But all of it, Nigerians, Lagosians, need to study more. They need to think more.
You know, when someone just talks about this street name, it.is your ego that kicks in. And that ego will make you kick in and just talk about surface things that don’t affect you or your family or your children. And that is what they’re going to do. That’s a distraction. So Lagosians, Nigerians, they need to see past it. These politicians should come and tell us what they’ve done with the money for 20 years.
They should come and tell us why Lagos owes so much money to the banks and what they have been using the money for. They should come and tell us why they’re spending so much money on consultancy fees and air freshener and all of these things. Right, Lagos State has money. Why are our children in such poor educational system? Why is it that the majority of people would rather send their children to private schools than public schools? Why do we not have water running from our taps? Why is it that you’re in Lekki and the water is so bad you have to bathe with brown, smelly water? Why can’t you have the waterworks that supply water to all the people here, knowing full well that this is all sand-filled land? Right? Why are our inner roads so terrible? You come off a decent highway that has been created, that by the next rainy season, it has all washed away, and then you turn off, turn right or turn left, and then the whole roads are, you think you’re in a village.
The whole Lagos West, go to Ojo, go to parts of Amuwo, go to parts of Festac Town, go to parts of Badagry and even Lagos East, go to parts of Ikorodu, right, why are they like that? These are the things that affect you. I remember when I was campaigning for Senate, when I went to Badagry, people would tell you how a woman is trying to give birth, she’s ready to go into labour, and she has to go through all these bad roads to get to the hospital on the express. It.is the most uncomfortable thing. These are the issues. When we talk about issues, it is to the benefit of Lagosians.
Talking about issues, people like Babatunde Gbadamosi (BOG), myself, other politicians that are talking about Blue Line, Blue Line, Blue Line, train, train, train, it’s about opposition talking about issues. So as Lagosians and Nigerians, we do not do ourselves justice by ignoring issues and falling for this their trap, we don’t gain anything from it.
What do you identify as Nigeria’s major problem, because, recently, the National Assembly committees, that is, the House of Representatives Committee and Senate Committee, were here on the Constitution Review public hearing and people were asking for additional state creation. They are also asking for true federalism among others. What exactly would you say is the problem of Nigeria? Is it leadership? Is it inter-changing the constitution and making it a federal constitution? What exactly is it in your own view?
The problem of Nigeria starts with bad leadership, poor leadership, absolutely poor leadership. When you look at what China has been able to achieve in the last 100 years, it is the direct result of quality leadership.
Those are the brilliant people that want to do the best for their country and take pride in doing the best for their country, not their bank account, not the cars that their children are driving, but the best for their people.
And the fortunate thing is, once everybody is rich, you will become rich. That is what these people don’t know. They think they can steal from the country and develop the country at the same time? No. It will never work because your mind is constantly on how you will steal money.
So, the quality of your decisions is poor. You will give a contract to somebody that is not deserving because your son is on the board. Meanwhile, you could have given that contract to someone else at a cheaper price and still get a better quality for your people. Right? But you are making bad decisions because you are constantly thinking about yourself and your interest. You are not there to serve.
So, these are some of the problems. I would say poor leadership because that is where it starts. If you look at our Constitution, well it might not be perfect, as a working document, if we follow it to the letter, we would have a good country.
Our Constitution says one of the reasons why we should remove a sitting governor is if you find out and able to prove that he has sworn an oath of allegiance to another country. That is the Constitution of the country. You take that to court and you prove that somebody has sworn an oath of allegiance to another country, and is also chief security officer, and the court will bypass that and pretend as if they did not see it, and you think we can have a good country? How does that make sense? Your chief security officer? The Nigerian leader should be the best of us.
Best of us does not just mean a businessman or a big man. He should be best of us in terms of willingness to sacrifice himself for something that is bigger than him. That is why in the past, in America, if you served in the Army and you showed a desire for service and love of your country, they took pride in you running for president or running for governor because you have shown the ultimate love for your country. But here, you have a situation where we are looking at a big man. He is a big man, how? By making money for himself? Because someone is making money for himself, why do you think that he can make money for you? Why do you equate that?
A quality leader is somebody that at some points in life, has shown a level of empathy, a level of compassion, a level of love for his people and humanity at large. That is a sign of service. We don’t really have that in the leaders that we have (in Nigeria) today. A lot of them are career politicians, a lot of them are concerned about their interests, a lot of them have fine tuned their way of playing all these scheming and tricks to get to their positions. That is why they don’t have shame.
A person can come and lie. You can see on his face he knows he is lying, and he will continue to lie. It doesn’t matter. A person can come out and say “this man is good”, and tomorrow he comes out and say “this man is bad”, just because he has gone to go and see the president. Bull shit!
So, poor leadership in terms of intellectual capacity. Go and look at the quality of intelligence that the people that lead England, that lead America, that lead China have. These are brilliant people. Because, to make a difference in the world we live in today, you must be brilliant. You must be able to see far. You must have vision. You must be visionary. Even If you don’t know how to do something, you should be brilliant enough to find the brilliant people that can help you achieve that. But we don’t have that. We have leaders that are poor in character. We have a leader that has associated himself with selling drugs.
We have a leader that we are not sure of his or her real name. Certificates are forged. We have a leader that is taking pride in getting lawyers to protect his results from being made open to the public.
And he is a public servant, and public figure. So, you have all these and, somehow, you expect a country that works? How?
How Is a person that is hiding his own degree going to show you how he is spending your money? You are putting him in trust of your commonwealth. All the money that is supposed to look after you, he’s the man in charge but this man is using lawyers to hide his certificates and it’s not just him, we have many leaders that will not bring out their results. They will not bring out their certificates but they will carry fake certificates. We have a president, or a leader that we cannot see any of his school mates. The one that we saw as his school mate, we now later found out that the man was much younger than him and was not in the same country, and I don’t even know.
It’s just one controversy after the other. Something that is supposed to be very straightforward. I have all the documents…
To be continued…
