A former minister under Pres-
ident Olusegun Obasanjo,
Mrs Obi Ezekwesili has come
hard on Governor Sanwo-Olu of La-
gos State for, what she considered his
shoddy approach to addressing the
transportation challenges of the state.
She is particularly angered by what
she termed his failure to provide for
a better alternative in alleviating the
hardship faced by Lagosians on daily
basis before restricting okada and tri-
cycle operators in the state.
Here her, ‘I am not saying that Gov-
ernance is easy. Of course not. There
will be difficulties. There will always
be challenges in Governance. But to
consistently offer Governance that
only guarantees daily hardship for
your Citizens? Come on. As a Lead-
er, even if your people don’t care for
themselves, you have a duty to care
for them. Something is congenital-
ly lacking in the DNA of our public
leadership. Until we fixed this empa-
thy-deficit in our public governance,
policies will always breed unnecessary
hardship.”
According to her, the state govern-
ment was hasty in restricting the oper-
ations of the okada and tricycle oper-
ators, hence the hardship the action is
causing Lagosians.
“I expect Lagos State Government
to have by now reversed itself on the
hasty and poorly designed action, and
stop the unnecessary hardship. Then
get back to your Policy Design Table
and restart a proper process for solv-
ing the problems originally identified.”
She bemoaned the inability of gov-
ernment to show empathy for the
struggling masses or help alleviate
their daily sufferings. Rather, several
of their policies, she maintained, have
led to the disruption of already diffi-
cult life of the citizens, further loss of
productivity for businesses already
struggling to stay alive and meet pay-
roll.
