Chef Martin Onovo, the 2015 presidential candidate of the National Conscience Party (NCP), has said that the Lagos Masterplan is stale and has failed woefully.
Onovo, a chieftain of the Movement for Fundamental Change (MFC), who spoke in Lagos, said there was an urgent need to review the Masterplan.
He lamented that since 1999, Lagos State had not improved significantly with all the trillions of Naira, which he maintained were being wasted by the various state administrations in the name of prosecuting the Masterplan.
It would be recalled that the issue of implementation of the Lagos Masterplan came to the fore during the events leading to the All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship primary.
The party’s leadership had touted an alleged deviation of the Lagos Masterplan as one of the reasons it could not give Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, the incumbent state governor, a return ticket.
Ambode was therefore subjected to a primary election, which had not been the practice in the state since the return to democratic governance.
During the primary, Ambode lost to Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who had the support of the party’s leadership and major stakeholders.
Onovo, an engineer and political activist, stated: “Presently, Lagos State infrastructure is very poor, public education is very weak, corruption is very high and it has the highest debt of all Nigerian States.
“The debt of the Lagos State government is particularly paradoxical considering the comparatively very high revenue of Lagos State.
“The problems of Lagos State include the leadership, the culture of corruption and rent seeking vested interests.”
Onovo maintained that a simple review of the Lagos Masterplan would be insufficient, adding that it would also need a better political leadership to appropriately review the plan and implement it.
He, however, stressed that Nigerians should insist on the right leadership for the country and for all states, without which implementation of such plans would be impossible.
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