Venerable Funso Awe, the governorship candidate of the National Conscience Party (NCP) in Lagos State, has said that if he is elected, he will review the state’s masterplan as the existing one has become obsolete.
Awe, who spoke in Lagos, maintained that any masterplan or a development plan that has existed for about 20 years should be improved upon to take care of developments in modern times as well as emerging trends.
Commending Bola Ahmed Tinubu for putting together some experts to draw a materplan for Lagos State when he was the governor, the governorship candidate stressed that a lot of things have changed since the plan came into existence.
He said: “I believe that we are in a fast moving generation where things develop fast. Whatever masterplan you had 20 years ago will be obsolete by now. I wonder how many of us are still using phones they bought 20 years ago.
“What we are using now after Nokia 2010 is modern. If you are using a car 20 years ago, that model would have become obsolete.
“When you talk of a Lagos masterplan, it should have undergone a review by now. We intend to review every aspect of Lagos. We shall have a new Lagos masterplan.”
Ven. Awe, an Anglican priest and activist, maintained that the new masterplan for Lagos, which he envisaged, would take into cognisance the economic, social and political aspects of Lagos.
“A child of 20 years ago must be in the university now. A professor of 20 years ago must have retired. Twenty years ago is a generation. That generation of Lagos when the Lagos masterplan was put together is gone.
“If I become the Lagos State governor, a team of a new generation of Lagosians will be put together to put up a new masterplan for Lagos,” he stated.
Officials of the state government and the APC have always spoken of the Lagos masterplan put in place by Tinubu during his tenure, which is expected to last 50 years.
They maintain that Tinubu and his successors have continued to follow the masterplan for the development of the state, hence the state had become a mega city.
READ ALSO: 2019 Presidential election: Northern youths not decided on a candidate yet– Group
But, the issue of Lagos masterplan came to the fore once more during the recent APC governorship primaries when Tinubu said that one of the reasons the party’s major stakeholders and leaders refused to give the incumbent Governor Akinwunmi Ambode a second term ticket was that he tampered with the state’s original masterplan.
Awe said that while former Governor Tinubu should be commended for giving the state a strong political platform, he stressed that the APC leader had become afraid of losing his hegemony and strong grip of the politics of the state to the younger generation.
He added: “Lagos masterplan is not generally a Lagos masterplan. It is Bola Tinubu’s masterplan. I have a lot of respect for Tinubu. You do not underestimate your opponents.
“But, Tinubu is afraid of losing his control and hegemony of Lags to someone younger, hence the treatment Ambode received.”
He added that the former Lagos State governor Raji Fashola tampered with the masterplan without Tinubu and the other APC leaders raising an eyebrow then.
