 Ashwajubola metinubu, the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban of the Universe and his dear wife herself a notable political phenomenon ranking senator Uluremi Tinubu. Ashwajubola metinubu, the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban of the Universe and his dear wife herself a notable political phenomenon ranking senator Uluremi Tinubu. Ashwajubola metinubu, the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban Bogu and the Jagaban the fire me of a kitty state is excellency o lu wa roti me akere do lu of on those state is excellency is excellency governor along of plateau state former governor of Oshun state o gweni raouf aregwe shola the governor elect of lega state governor elect of lega state miska babajin de san wu lu I'm sorry deputy governor of a do state comrade philippe shwaibu members of the national assembly present members of the federal executive council present service chiefs and I believe the inspector general of police in particular is here your excellency is of the diplomatic com are royal fathers present imperial majesty the only of ifen oba o wu zi o ja ja the second is royal majesty the o wa wu ku who is also present today is royal majesty the way of a doing it oba rufos adijube is royal majesty the way of a doing it oba rufos adijube is royal highness kitaro the second of bogu kingdom barista muhammed dantoro is royal highness the honor of abadji dr. adamu baba yunusa and all the representative the representative of my own cabiezi the representative of the karibu of remorland the aladu abaddu is royal highness oba amisu shola abaddi tijani and all other royal fathers who are present here today distinguished guests ladies and gentlemen we are here for the 11th edition of the Bola Tinubu Kologa this is a yearly development gathering a yearly gathering where we try to question and interrogate some of the difficult questions on economic and social development not just in Nigeria but across the world we do it in celebration of a man who has spent the last 30 years of his life in creative and catalytic public service he has from these days as governor of legal state provided clarity of thought and vision pioneering vision in all aspects of governance he is not a lawyer as many of us know but there are few Nigerians who have provoked so many legal controversies and constitutional challenges resulting in several landmark judicial rulings especially in the area of federalism and what today is loosely described as restructuring many of us know of course that he is not an engineer but a lot of his vision is what is responsible for what we see today in Lagos the BRT many know the bus rapid transport transport the leki industrial zone it will be a co-atlantic project which is a private project but which he initiated as governor of Lagos state and of course the reform in the reform of the tax system of Lagos state today Lagos as we know earns more revenue more Nigeria than 31 states of Nigeria put together that by itself began in 2001 with a very innovative way in which he reformed the tax system in Lagos and created an independent Lagos inland revenue service several African countries and states of Nigeria have engaged the LIRS as consultants for their own reform efforts but how about electoral reform in 2007 when our party then the ACM was rigged out of elections in Oshun, in Akiti, Nondo and in Ado state I was asked he invited me to his residence as I should have invited me to his residence at Bodilom and he said to me the only way by which we can possibly reclaim the states that have been taken away from us by this region is going through the courts and he said to me that the only way is by proving that there was multiple voting in other words proving that a few people simply from printed ballot papers dumped the ballot papers into ballot boxes and they were counted in favour of the opposition then of course the PDP he then said to me that the only way we can do this is by somehow he says I don't know how you are going to do it but somehow proving by forensic evidence that this is exactly what happened I said to him I said that nobody has ever proved an electoral case, an electoral petition by forensic evidence there is just no history of it and I said what is even more there are over a million ballot papers if we consider all of the ballot papers in each of these states there are over a million, in fact at the time there are over 1.3 million ballot papers putting together all the states aha can we prove multiple voting he said you know I have told you what my own views you just go and look for a way of sorting this out so I went to the UK and met with possibly the most experienced fingerprint expert in the entire United Kingdom a gentleman called Adrian Forte introduced to me by some of the QCs who I worked with in the UK and when I told Adrian Forte the enormity of the problem he laughed and almost fell off his chair he said in all my own almost 50 years of experience as a fingerprint expert I have not even done up to 4000 fingerprints you are now saying that I should come and do 1.3 million fingerprints come on that's almost impossible anyway so we parted that day that was the first day and then he called me back on Monday and said let's talk again about this crazy thing and we sat and talked about it and somehow designed a way he said of course we used a bit of technology but most importantly we got we were able to get fingerprint experts he said to me he said the only way is to get the number of fingerprint experts that have never been assembled before I said about how many he said a minimum of 50 fingerprint experts in the end we hired 63 fingerprint experts 53 50 of them were from the UK police what was even more interesting about that was that even to get the UK police to support us actually we had to come all the way from Nigeria to come and talk to friends and people who knew to try and persuade the authorities to let us use the UK police in the end they allowed us to of course in the spare time of those policemen we got an additional 10 policemen altogether 63 policemen working flat out for almost 6 months we were able to put together for the first time definitely in the history of electoral petitions anywhere in the world we were able to put together a solid forensic case that showed that all of the places where we were defeated it was on account of multiple thumbprinting and we also demonstrated that it was impossible for those who said they voted for instance we showed that if you cast 20,000 votes in a particular unit when we calculated the time that it takes to cast one single vote it's usually above 5 minutes but we discovered that our friends in that other political party were able to cast their votes in 5 seconds because all they were doing was simply thumbprinting they just simply take out a booklet and thumbprint as many as possible so we were able to demonstrate all of that in court called a long story short one by one we were able to get back the states that had been taken away from us the only way by which that could ever have been achieved is surely not just by the vision but by the determination of the leader of our leader at that time it was of course the leader of ACN at the time and he showed the kind of leadership that was very very rare of course not only defining what he thought was the way forward but also supporting it in every way and backing it in the very end the last state that we finally won was Osho state after almost 3 years of battle we finally won Osho state and I think that one of the things that you will say that all of us will agree with about our celebrant today is just that his dogged attitude his refusal to accept no for an answer actually you also pioneered merit in cabinet appointments in particular and I want to emphasise this because one of the major drawbacks that we have as a nation is that way by which we are blindsided into thinking that we can avoid merit and expect to achieve great things we simply cannot avoid merit I think as you already demonstrated in the years when he was governor that political appointments especially cabinet appointments he simply looked for those that he considered the best possible material at the time wherever they were from so for the first time in the history of Lagos state we had cabinet members from other parts of the country beginning with other parts of the south west Raouf Ahebeshola of course is from Osho state Ai from Ogustate Wali Edun from Ogustate Athawari from Delta he became the first commissioner for lands Lai Mohamed from Quara state Delia Lackey from Aikiti state and so many others for the first time we appointed judges from other in fact I have forgotten Benakabu Ize Benakabu Ize of course from Nambra state was commissioner for economic planning and budget after Yemika Dusso and for several years after that he served as commissioner for budget and national planning but also judges the appointment of judges from everywhere else in the country Justice Izou Yabbo and Justice Sibyl Mwaka were both appointed to be judges of Lagos state there is no other state in the country except some states in the north where we have seen the appointment of individuals from other states and I should argue for how many have that just speaking the best people no matter where they are from is a very important part of our story as a country so every once in a while I think that history gives us one or two persons who are gifted transformative leaders and I believe that our country has been gifted by this great transformative leader Ashwa Jupola Metsinubu I believe very strongly I believe very strongly that this man's political trajectory has only just begun he is a man who has tremendous giftings and is a man who I believe God has a great plan ahead for I pray for you Ashwa Jupola that as your days so shall your strength so shall your wisdom so shall your favour with God in Jesus mighty name amen I just say a word or two about the next level as you know the expression next level itself was a political campaign slogan in these last elections and what we were saying was simply that there was a next phase to what our country had seen there are many who would say that there were several things that were promised in 2015 which had not yet been realized but one of the I think the best way of putting it is to simply say that our country for the first time is experiencing a type of leadership that is bound to lead us to where it is that we have we have purpose for ourselves as a government the honest in my view the honest leadership a leadership with integrity of our president Muhammad Buhari is a very important component of getting anywhere at all in all of our development plans just before at the last colloquium that Nigeria's main problem is not a lack of ideas is not a lack of projects or programs it was most of the time especially with the leadership in the past was a lack of integrity in leadership and corruption in particular was the reason why we were finding it difficult to make any progress and I explained that that's why we earned US Dollars in four years 2010 to 2014 the highest ever in the history of our country the highest ever and yet Lagos in Badua Expressway not down Lagos Carno Rail all of what is being done today not down we cannot point to a single major project a single major infrastructure project that was completed in that in a ten year period including power so a government coming after so many years of waste must be a government first that emphasizes fiscal products a government that emphasizes integrity in public finance so that we manage the little resources we have to achieve the maximum that can be achieved and that is what President Muhammad Buhari set out to do the president has never has never claimed to be an orator and we all know that he is not an orator he just gets things done he was under President Muhammad Buhari that three of the four refineries that we have today were built when he was minister for petroleum 3,500 kilometers of pipelines were built by him as minister of petroleum in a three year period so there is a track record here not of talking but of just getting things done and this is what we have seen in the past four years that is why we are able to put aside the money for the legal supervision expressway and that is going on in our place at the moment that is why we opened the first phase of the legal scannery way and that was commissioned just a few weeks before a couple of days I think it was just last month but that was commissioned the Lagos Abeghutai Badon phase of that project the Takwari Railway now completed after 35 years of being on the books the Lagos the Abuja Rail the light rail project here in Abuja started in 2005 budget after budget never completed was completed also at the end of 2017 now we have that light rail now we have that light rail from the airport to Idu and same as several other projects several other major infrastructure projects Manbila Hydro has been on the cards for 40 years we have just put together the resources to begin that project and we will complete this project so for us infrastructure is critical at the next level you cannot have power you cannot have the situation where you have it where you have the kind of power situation you have today and expect transformating development that is why we are focused on power and other infrastructure we are focused on fixing the infrastructure in our country and we believe that if we are able to fix the infrastructure the roads, the rail and especially power we will be able to make significant progress today our rail project starts from the Appaport so that we are able to clear the congestion in that port because the legal scandal rail begins from the Appaport and we can start taking out cargo from the Appaport using rail as an alternative means of transportation the same is true of agriculture and we just heard our partners from Brazil talking about the agro industrial phase of agricultural development and we are committed to that project because we believe that that is what will transform the agro industrial phase of our planning and that is what will transform agriculture in this country and create the additional jobs that we require there is not enough to have farmers everywhere we need the refining capacity we need the processing capacity and that is what our partnership with the Brazilians will provide for us same is true of the reforms that we are making in education and healthcare today the emphasis is on digital literacy the emphasis is on training our teachers to be able to train the next generation of children in school and we are focused on doing so using some of the methods that we have described very comprehensively not just in the ERGP but in our next level document which I hope will be made available today so we are focusing on science, technology, engineering arts and maths not STEM but STEAM because we have added arts to it we are focusing on training young people on training young people in digital skills critical thinking and various other skills that are necessary for the sorts of jobs that the 21st century will provide the same is true of healthcare our focus on healthcare will be on national health insurance because we cannot we cannot finance healthcare by the budget alone composing national health insurance that is going to open the doors for financing healthcare for us finally we are also talking again about social investment our social investment program at the next level social investment program at the moment the program is the biggest of its kind anywhere in the African continent where we are feeding every day in our school feeding program 9.2 million children across 26 states every single day that program is important not just from the point of view of providing nutrition for many of the young people in public schools many of whom come from very poor parents and many who may not be assured of a decent meal a day that is a very important program for us also because of the multiply effect on agriculture and also on distribution of those products and of course those we employ as cooks and other services the same is true of our trader money program the government enterprise and empowerment program G trader money, market money and all of that where we are giving money to the bottom of the trading pyramid in Nigeria we lend them 10 it's a program of course as you know of the bank of industry we lend 10,000 Naira to this bottom of the pyramid traders once they repay we give them 15,000 Naira all of this is done on an electronic platform and it's on their mobile phones and they get 15,000 Naira when they pay back 20, 25 all the way up to 100 the same is true of our market money which we give to cooperatives and we've done so far trader money almost over a million and market money which is to the cooperatives almost 500,000 and we intend to expand the scope of that we also intend to expand the scope of our empowerment which is our jobs program for young people young graduates coming out of school and some non-graduates we are engaging 500,000 of such young people I'm paying them every month most of them now have a device such as I have which contains trading materials for enhancing the employability skills and that also that device also helps us to track several things that we want to track and also helps them to provide services especially survey services marketing research to people who may engage their services we intend to expand that program because we must expand the program 1.7 million people come out of school and are looking for jobs every single year we are able to bridge that gap we are engaging 500,000 of them as soon as they get out of the youth group but we need to expand that if we don't expand it of course the numbers continue to increase so the next level promises to be exciting it promises to be as challenging as possibly where we are coming from but as the president has said defeated we have no other focus we have no other commitment but the progress of this country and we will ensure that step by step we get to where it is that we promise the country that we are taking the country to so I want to say to you all the next level is for all of us and I urge that all of us co-operate to take us to this next level so on behalf of the president Muhammad Mubarak who I represent here today again I like to wish a happy birthday and say thank you all very much for making the time to come to this event God bless you all