Labour Party (LP)’s Governorship Candidate for Lagos State, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, has shared his vision for ‘a new order’ in Lagos with Chude Jideonwo, host of #WithChude. “A new order is good quality of life; a new order is when you are driving on the road, you are not stuck in traffic, and area boys are not knocking on your door, trying to rob you because you are driving through Apapa. A new order is quality education that can be applied to make life better and increase earning potentials,” Rhodes-Vivour explained in the interview.
“When I become governor, we are going to deliver four rail lines in four years. The plan is that we need 160 kilometres of rails to make Lagos State work, and we are going to invest heavily in water transportation and make Lagos State, a truly intermodal city in terms of transportation. Once that happens, Lagos starts to open up because development becomes decentralized. It is now feasible to build housing in Ikorodu, Badagry, Ajeromi/Ifelodun, and open Lagos up. So, everything is not coming to the center, and we now have self-sustaining cities across the state.”
“And then, we are going to fix the Agbero situation across the state. This has become a real issue. We need Lagos to become a twenty-four-hour city and security is essential to make that happen. We are going to work with them as stakeholders, because we need to look at this thing holistically, and equip them with alternative means of living. And because we are not a government that needs people to suppress and intimidate people not to vote, we are going to tell them that that job description is no longer available. So, we are going to put them in skills, and programs that allow that to happen.”
On choosing to join the opposition parties (KOWA, PDP, Labour Party) to run for office in Lagos, instead of the ruling party, Rhodes-Vivour said, ‘It is a reflection of who you are and where you want to go. It is always easier to take the easy way out and join the big boys that are making things happen. But then, what is your desire, what is the impact you want to make? If I join the ruling party, especially in Lagos, the revolution, the change and the kind of impact I want to make on society in Lagos State, I will not have the free hand to do it. So, it defeats the purpose for me to join the APC. I was coming fresh from activism, so KOWA party was the perfect launch pad to be able to handle my conscience, my ideas about Nigeria, and really understand Nigeria for who she is.”
He also addressed the All Progressives Congress (APC)’s claim that the development in Lagos state was their track record. According to him, “The state of Lagos that Bola Tinubu met was a state that already had all the embassies, all the banks, the ports, an international airport; everything that is required for a city to work was already in place.
“The Third Mainland Bridge had already been built, imagine APC trying to a bridge a Third Mainland Bridge when it’s taken them over 16 years to build 16 kilometers of rail. So, there was a lot of infrastructure already built that he met. What he now created was the infrastructure to collect money. Now the conversation is, all the money that he collected does not translate to the infrastructural development that we see in the state.”
