 The Labour Party governorship candidate in Lagos Dade, Waddubor Rhodes Viva, has said that the all-progressive congress led state governments created problems for Lagotians and he would never close ranks with the APC. The aspiring governor, who was an active participant in the NSR's movement, and has been at the forefront in youth involvement in politics, as well as the campaign against voter apathy, said the Lagos government was being governed by proxy, by one man. Byddebor said the APC had for a long time underestimated the masses in the state. We're joining us to discuss tonight is the Labour Party Governorship candidate, Byddebor Vivo-Aroads, and he's going to be talking to us about his campaign and plans for Lagos. It's good to have you joining us in this to you. Always a pleasure. Happy New Year to you. See you. See you. Thank you. So I was reading a few things about you recently, and one of the first things that caught me was when you said that you were in a mission to free Lagos state. And I'm wondering, what are you freeing Lagos from? And how do you intend to free Lagos? So the idea is to free Lagos from state capture. State capture is when the resources of a state have been cornered by the political elite for their own self-sustainment for their benefits and for their proxies of their family, as opposed to truly the benefits of the state. Lagos state is run for profit. It's not run for the people. I say this because in everything that you think the government is performing in, you find it's performing inefficiently in terms of price that they're implementing projects for. And you find that its interest must always be represented, not for the people's interest, but for the sake of collecting money. I mean, when you have family members in government positions, when you have family members in charge of bus routes you have, you just see that the state is literally organised around collecting funds and resources for state capture and the people in charge of the hegemony. And that is what we're trying to free Lagos from. How do you intend to do this? Because the picture you painted sounds more like a strategic calculated cabal of sorts. And how do you intend to break these ranks? How do you intend to destroy the establishment for the ones who want to work the way it is? Yes, the idea is that the people are tired. It's not just me. You cannot create a new type of politics without the people's active engagement in it and saying that they're tired. They want a situation where one kilometre of road is being done for the price that it should be done for, not you are doing the price of one kilometre of road that you have used to get four kilometres of road, right? You're not taking 20 plus years to do 16 kilometres of rail when you're already taking the money for it and you're supposed to actually do 160 kilometres. At the rate they're going, it will take 200 years to do the 160 kilometres of rail that they plan to do and collect their money for in the first place. Yes, we need 160 kilometres of rail for Lagos to work. They've done 16 kilometres of that in 20 plus years, right? At the rate they're going, it will take 200 years to finish that 160 kilometres of rail. I know that you're one person and you obviously are trying to set Lagos on the right path. But Lagosians have been in this for 20 years, like you said. Why have we not pushed to ask the questions on accountability for these projects that you're saying lots of monies have been dispersed but then very little is there to show for? Where does the average Lagosian come in here? It's not just about the one who's running for office. You see the issue is Fela has talked about this since. We are people that are normalised, suffering, normalised with geography, who will be suffering and smiling. Everybody knows all of these things. Everybody knows about billions that are going to Alfa Beta. That has been going for years. Meanwhile, we have children in primary schools sitting on the floor in ill-equipped schools, ill-equipped hospitals. We have accommodation crisis all across the state. So, they know these things. They know the appropriations that have happened in terms of properties that belong to the state that have been taken, lands that have been taken by families, polytechnics or hospitals for medical nurses that have been appropriated. So they know these things. But I feel that for the longest time they felt helpless. The things that they know or you believe that they know is just something that you think they know because another thing is how many people really know what government is doing aside from those who actually maybe are on the level of you and I. That's a good point, right? I think that from what I've experienced and even from politics, grass-roots politics, when you go and say these things in words, people don't look surprised, they don't look shocked. They are aware of all this information. They know. So that's why I give that impression. So even at the high level where you say we are putting at and then going to grass-roots and talking to people and you are saying these things, they know what alphabet is, right? They know about all the appropriation that legal state has done. The people behind the state capture of legal state has done. So the idea is this and why it's so important is this. We have a huge population in legal states and resources must be put in place to make these populations productive as possible and for a state to run as efficiently as possible so it can truly be the commercial captor of Nigeria, number one for ease of doing business and number one that has social welfare background that can allow because there's too many people. And when you have so many people like this, if you don't manage the whole process and the people, well, it starts to create chaos. And literally we're starting to get to that. You might have seen the video where in Lekki people just came and almost just hijacked about 30 cars and just started banging and robbing them early evening. There are people that are trying to go home in Apapah. They're going to take the long good because of all the tankers that are in traffic, they are always robbed. Thank you for talking about Apapah because this is a question I will ask every single person who says they want to run for governor or they want to be governor of Lagos State. A few weeks ago I talked about this issue on the radio about the Apapah or Shodie Tinkern area and the mayhem that goes on there every single day. There was some magic wand that was thrown around sometime in 2023 when the vice president visited. Every single truck disappeared. So I'm wondering if we have what it takes to clear that place in one day, why can't we continue it? What exactly does it pay us? I mean, how does it pay us to continue to have that block there? So there are a number of factors here and we have to actually take time and look at it. One is the human factor because when they brought that into system, right, there was a bit of leeway that started to happen. But then the human factor got involved. Stakeholders felt some of them felt they were not carried along and they also would have put a make money from those long queues. It's in their interest for those things to exist because Lagos State has normalized the idea and it's called the culture of Monkey the Walk Baboon, the truck. People just come and just be collecting, collecting, right? So it's in their interest for that to happen. But also, you have all the tank farms that don't have proper parking and places for their trucks or trucks that are coming into them to park so everybody's parking on the road. Another problem we have is because we are such an unproductive nation. You have eight out of ten containers that are coming and going back empty. So, typically, a container comes in, discharges, it should go and pick up something to export. So you have a bit of time lag but you're just dropping off and going right back to the port and that's the problem. And that's where by God's grace is excellent to be the whole conversation about moving from consumption to production where actually starts to make a difference even in Lagos. And then now have the trains which we're talking about. Train systems should not just be about moving people, it must also be about moving cargo. One of the reasons why our roads are so bad, I mean look at that papai gormorod. Terrible, I was there on a Sunday and a trailer literally tipped over and that's the reason why I love trailers tipping over, killing a lot of people. These trucks are carrying so much load and then they're destroying the roads, right? And they're constantly moving and they're constantly in traffic. Our roads are not built for that kind of load. So those, and we find it's all across the world. Most of this cargo is moved by water, by rail. So we need to move that. And the federal government has done quite a bit of work with the train system that's going from the ports to Ybutymyta and they've made quite a significant progress. So we're going to do that. And then we're also going to ensure that we're moving things by barges and dry ports. So we need to do expanding that in Badagria as well and the audio access. So we want to move those containers off the road. Still talking about movement. Let's talk about transportation in Lagos, which is another major issue. Yeah, major issue. But we cannot talk about transportation without talking about where the transportation goes on, especially the roads. The roads in Lagos seem to not necessarily being the best date, especially the Lekieic Bay Express. It's now more like you're going on a desert safari of sorts. I know that Lekieic Bay might be a federal road and a lot of that. What's the relationship between government and federal government and states in terms of these federal highways? Because I mean, I tell you, I'm from a state where we've had a terrible spot for years. And I'm talking about from the Obasanjo administration to now. Monies are air mats for us in the budget. But the Odukbangi junction or Calabai two road is a total mess. So again, how do state governments liaise with if you were a governor of Lagos States, what would you do to make sure that these expressways are actually pliable and not desk straps? Yeah, so for me, what I found, and you look, the APC always said that once they are aligned, then everything is going to work properly, but that's not been the case. Lagos States for me is a city state. And while we need the federal government, Lagos can do without it, in my opinion. Because the state government itself does not need to spend its own money doing public works. Our work is to create an enabling environment for a lot of private sector and infrastructure developers to come and actually do these works. If we need to tow places, we can do that. But the idea is to make sure that whatever tow that's being put is at the cheapest possible rate for our people. And do these tows not have a timeline? Because again, one of the issues with tolling in Nigeria is we make the money, but we still continue to tow it. Exactly. So for me, it's about creating. So whatever we're trying to do is to maximise the benefits to the life of people. So that's the negotiation we'll be doing. You're coming here, you're going to and put this price so it's affordable for a lot of people. And then the tolling stops after a certain period of time. And this way we'll be building infrastructure all across Lagos at the same time. Because of the shared number of people here, it is feasible to do a lot of projects in Lagos States. Now you find a lot of governments that want to keep their hand on each project. Because when you do big projects, you can then appropriate and steal money. We're not interested in that. We want to deliver maximum amount of service to people. So we are going partner in the private sector. They can do things at a benchmark. We can use the World Bank benchmark and say a kilometer a road is supposed to cost this. So you must deliver at that price. A lot of people say that talk is cheap, especially if you're trying to run for office and trying to get votes. And you sound all like this is what we're going to do. I mean, for want of a better example, the Bohar administration promised us so much. And here we are. It looks like we're back where we were in 2015. Anybody but the person who's sitting on that seat. Why should we trust you? Well, because I have a pedigree and a history of being a person of my word. I'm consistent, right? You have been anti-APC and the government that has existed in Lagos, all my political career. Does that make you better than... No, I mean, you see, we must make decisions out of hope and not fear, right? Because people have betrayed our trust, does not mean we completely give up because then what's the point of doing anything? But we must believe that things get better. And if I don't, and that's why I say these things live on TV, so you can hold me to that. The fact of the matter is I cannot get into this position if the people don't put me there. I don't have bullion vans. I don't have a whole host of agraros or touts, right? I'm counting on the people to put me there to serve them. And if I go in there and I don't do what is needed and you don't hold me to these things, you can't remove me. That's the wonderful thing about democracy, how it ought to be practiced, right? So we're coming here to serve and we can only get in based on people putting us there. Still talking transportation. Many would say for Lagos, that is the economic capital of Nigeria where we have many people, more and more people keep migrating to Lagos. We need more roads, more infrastructure development. So we now have the blue rail. We now have, well, we still have the water taxis that many people will say it's not enough, but should we not be thinking about cable cars and expanding our transportation system? Now, because the governor is running for a second term and you're also running, what other ideas would you be able to bring to the table? Because you obviously have lived abroad. You have a media of how transportation works. For example, in New York, you don't have to sit in traffic. You can use the underground, et cetera, et cetera. How do you intend to change transportation walls of the average Lagosian? That's a beautiful question. First of all, let's establish that our transportation system in Lagos state is mediocre at best, right? Most of the major roads, the third mainland bridge, you know, the opening was done by the military. I don't want to imagine many years. I mean, we're talking every, when it gets close to elections, it's not here, but four mainland bridge again, right? It's standard. You can literally predict what they're going to talk about, right? So we must actually deliver four rail lines in four years, right? Lagos to you, by the way, is 175 kilometers. It was done in five years, 1.5 billion. This part of taking 1.2 billion and they've only done 16 kilometers of rail. Now somebody is going and doing politics and tokenism, showing us pictures, but did anybody go on the blue line today? Has anybody gone on the blue line today? It's literally three bus stops, right? And this was supposed to go all the way from Marina to Badagria at first, then it reduced it to Okokomaiqo and then they reduced it even further. So we need a station where we have all the strange systems working and then we need to dredge our waterways properly. It takes care of two things, take care of our flooding and allows for us to have proper industrial water transportation. Ferries were in existence during Jack on this time. I mean ferries that were carrying 500, 600 people. The reason why water transportation has not been normalized, is because a lot of people don't feel safe because of those small boats and the capacity for them to capsize. When you have a proper large boat, people can start to feel comfortable. When you have a boat you can drive your car in. Come to the next side, drive your car out. People start to normalize an intermodal means of transportation in legal state. Now, once we've done that, then we can now start to think about other ideas. Cable cars are something I've always looked at. And you can have that kind of transportation in a particular local government. It doesn't have to be, you're going all the way from Ekejia to this place on a cable car. But you can look at these things and also these things that you can look at it in terms of attracting tourism. Because by the time you do things like that and then you're creating experiences, people want to come to legal states to experience that as well. So for me, I mean look at Venice. Just that there's a little cano. Yes, it gets people around, but it also is a tourist attraction, right? So we're going to be doing all of that and ensuring that even also ride sharing, even something as simple as the BRT lane, we have to open it up to the private sector. It's not okay for one person to just be the only person there. If you as a person has the capacity to have a bus, just like Uber, and you meet certain criteria, your bus should be allowed to go because we have deficit, we don't have enough buses. In the morning, you see long queues. So if you don't have the capacity to service all of that, why should only one person be able to? You know, so ride sharing, using innovation, ensuring that all of that, you know, normalise ride sharing, and then we advise people to try as many people as possible so that when you're going back on Terminalia, you're not just saying one man and his driver in a car. No, you use heat sensors to know, okay, this person, this car is full, this car is only one person, there is charge for that. But that will only happen after we've created alternative means of transportation, right? And then some places we pedestrianise, some places you can use bicycles. So we want to open this place up. And then the last thing is we need to decentralise our planning of Legos, so that every local government is running sustainably. And we are incentivising companies to set up there. So you are equal to, you don't necessarily feel the need to come to leci. You can get everything you need there, right? So that's the way Legos will also breathe. Let's talk about environmental issues, which also add to the natural disasters that happen. Now Legos is obviously a coastal state and we're always susceptible to flooding. But we do have a ministry of environment, which is at the federal and states. But the departments and the agencies that are under that ministry, what do they need to be doing? Because again, yes, we know that citizens have a role to play in terms of the dumping of unnecessary refuges and gutters, et cetera, et cetera. But sometimes we need to build the stick, but then there seems to be a lax in that area. There used to be what we called environmental sanitation back in the day, but then some states had made it a thing of the past, for example, in Cross River, every day is environmental sanitation day. And same for a Qaibong state. So why can't Legos do that? Especially knowing that you have so many people and then the more people you have, the more garbage that the city has to deal with. So what innovative ideas do you have in that regard? Thank you. So the first thing is we need to strengthen our local governments, right? At the local government level, I want to have will be potential governors as local government chairmen, not people that are appendages from your political party that just throw into local government so we reward them for loyalty. No, one visionary leader, potential governors. You never see that jump in Legos from local government chairmen to governor. But that's what it should be. Now, once we have that, we now have to understand waste as wealth. After human capacity, waste is our biggest resource. We produce so much waste and we have such a small land size so we can pick up so much waste. And for me, when we treat waste as wealth, we have different rules for organic waste, different rules for plastic waste, different rules for paper waste and organic waste will come with, will be picked up by a different truck. Now, in doing this, we are opening up the entire waste management system and de-politicizing it. You don't need to know the person APC to be part of Loma or Part Speed as a PSP. We open it up transparently. So now we have different rules for collective waste because right now all we call waste management is waste dumping. We are not managing waste. We are creating landfills, which is wasting waste. Now, in doing all of this, we now have a situation where it's too valuable for it to be dumping. And then we are also going to have a zero-policy towards plastics. You can create bags out of cassava. How is that going to be? Come on. Let me tell you. Let me tell you how. Literally. No, you're asking for a renovative idea. So instead of using plastics now, you use cassava fluid. Yes. Yes. There are bags that are made out of that. Yeah. Yes. And guess what, when you dump it. How readily available are they? We have cassava in Nigeria. Yes, but how readily available are these cassava-made bags? These are things, yes. These are things that are not hard to make. I mean, if you said paper bags, it's very feasible. Paper bags as well, paper bags as well. But the reason why I say cassava is that you are also incentivising the farms. Right? And also you have a situation where once you dump that plastic, it decomposes by itself. Right? So you are talking about innovative ideas. These are things that we are going to bring. Not overnight we are going to ban things. We will test it in the local government. See feedback and expand on it. But the idea is we want to be a state known globally for zero waste. That's where we want to get to. And back to your question about other innovations. So we are sure that our waterways are now blocked based on changing our understanding and perception of waste. However, one of our biggest problems in legal cities is that we have no wetland protection policy. You wake up today, one developer that has paid government a certain amount of money has sand-filled one wetland. But wetlands are natural gutters that actually were supposed to contain water because it was a coastal state, like you said. But that's not the case. So literally, you see they are always blocking the paths for water. And unfortunately, you find I love this sand thing that is done for the benefit of the rich. And then water is displaced because water has to go somewhere. But you find that that water is displaced and is affecting people that do not have any embakment to protect them. You see the effect of a co-atlantic. Same thing. So we need to have a wetland protection policy that is sacrosanct and nobody is above it. And then an urban planning policy that also takes into consideration that we need to ensure that water is always able to live the city. So for instance, now you see, if you look on terminal ambulancy, they are starting to landfill the area of Makoko. They are doing this slowly because election season is just here. I'm sure it's going to full drive. One selection is over. But now all of that is now going to block the path of water from Ligos Mainland. And Ligos Mainland is going to start flooding more. Guess what? They will say it's climbing change. It's climbing change. But the things we are supposed to do by ourselves, we are not doing. But if what you're saying is anything to go by, we have experts in these, like I said, ministries of environment and ministries of works. And they are supposed to be the ones who say, this is what it should be as ideas or as an advisory to government or whoever is in town planning. It beats me to believe that they would sit back and allow this to happen. We have experts in ministry of works and ministry of planning that give approvals of buildings that collapse in Ligos every time. So, unfortunately, like I said, Ligos State is run for profit. It's not run for the interests of the people as far as I'm concerned. And I see it every day. So, for me, ensuring that we have these things and we can say, we are not going to take that money or this tax from this developer because we need to think long term and ensure that we can have reservoirs for water. So, this would be wetland. Bad as it is, but what we are going to do is convert it to a tourist park. We have plants there. We have animals there. So, it can become a zoo. But we don't have to sand fill it. It can just be walkways. I mean, you've been to, I forget the name of this garden in Lecky. Conservation. Yes, yes, yes, yes. It's joined tourists. It's joined crowds. So, yeah, they do have a kind of view. Exactly. So, you don't have to completely sand fill the place. You can make the most of nature and also allow it to do what it's supposed to do for you as a coastal city. And lastly, we make our drainage system digital and mechanised. So, we are not going to be reacting. Oh, rain fell. No. We know that rain is going to fall. And our pumps are operating based on data we are getting. So, it's operating at maximum efficiency every time. So, it's not going to be going at 100 consistently. Then go at 10 based on data we are getting about the rains that are falling and go to 100 when it's very heavy. Right? And we have this system all across Leicester. Ensure our canals are not blocked. I was in Suruliri day before yesterday. And you look at canals, it's just a dump. You have waste full of water that's not flowing properly. And this was Suruliri, a place that was the prime, one of the prime locations to live in the early 80s, early 90s. You know, so there's so much work to do, but we need leadership that is help bent on the quality of life that legosians have. Again, I ask you, you're one person. The establishment of the cabal is over the years has grown and there's so many people in Lips and Bound. How can one man break through this? Always remember. And all these ideas are amazing. They're laudable, but you have to get the votes first. And if you do get the votes, how do you break through? Because you see a lot of people would say President Buhari at first had the best interests for Nigerians, but look where we are. Yes. So, you can have the best ideas. Well, I'm sorry, I think there's interest. That's basic. There's empathy, which I think is the most important. So it's not running to tick a box. I've been president of Nigeria, which I believe President Buhari was running to do. Because if you want to be the best at what you are doing, you prepare yourself for it. When I went into politics, I'm an architect by profession. When I went into politics, I went back to school. I got another degree from uni-lag. I didn't go back abroad because I wanted to understand Nigeria a lot better. I got a master in research and public policy. I wanted to make myself the best version of myself to govern. President Buhari has no record of doing anything like that. So I don't want to compare apples and oranges. And also, right? Cerebral capacity, energy. And that's what Peter Albi is bringing to the table, aside from the other two candies. Cerebral energy and capacity. And I feel that when you combine that youth vibrancy, cerebral capacity, and empathy, you have a wonderful potential leader. And look at a legislative jack-on-deith. While we say, yes, you're a woman, he achieved everything he did in five and a half years with the civil service. Was he a civilian governor? He was. Yes, but why I'm asking this is that, well, how we practice democracy then and now is totally different. I understand. But also remember that. It's a different era. And I'm not saying people can't do it. We're here to change things, but then, looking at where he was and where we are today, it's a different border. No, yes, I agree 100%. When you talk to people of that era, you tell them how politics has become a money thing. They are shocked. When you sit down and talk to them about how you have spent, he's like, because then the people, the quality of followership was so impressive. They used to contribute money to the party and they took pride in it. But the fact of the matter is, all these political elites we are talking about, they're now up to 3,000. We are 20 million in legal state. We have more than a few good men. And I assure you that for me to have come this far is because there are lots of people that mean well and want a legos that I'm describing. And do you think that legosions are ready to move away from the norm and built in a green horn? I won't say I'm a green horn now. I work with the American government, I work with the Chinese government on public policy on... But you've never held a public office in Nigeria have you? I haven't, I haven't. But you know, sometimes the best things come from people that have not been stagnated by the status quo. Maybe we'll talk about experience. In the last 20 years, your experience is what? Maintaining the status quo of state capture. I don't give any value to that, right? So we want to change things and make sure legal state works for the people. So I believe that we have a good number of people that won't see that happen. And March is almost here, February is almost here by God's grace. The voice of the people is the voice of God. Okay, well, by the word Vivo Rhodes is the governorship candidate for the Labour Party in Lagos state. And he's been here telling us about his plans for Lagos. Always a pleasure to have you. Thank you so much. All right. Well, we'll take a quick break when we return. We'll be discussing President Bahair's promises to Nigerians when he came in 2015, as opposed to now that he said he's done his best. We'll be talking about that after this break.