Lagos State Government is planning to register between 12 and 15 million Lagosians and issue them with residents’ card, its governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu said on Thursday.
The move will provide an accurate picture of government policy and planning. Sanwo-Olu disclosed this at the ongoing 22 annual tax conference organized by the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (CITN) in Lagos.
He was worried that the Covid-19 pandemic slowed down the relaunch of the resident’s registration programme planned to hold on March or April 2020.
The governor noted what Nasir El-Rufai, governor of Kaduna State said about what they are doing around residents’ identity cards in Kaduna. “I want to say that Lagos too has started its own Lagos State Residents Registration Agency (LASRRA) card. Covid-19 has actually slowed us down. It was something we suppose to relaunch in March or April but we are just around getting ready now, getting ready to ensure that we register between 12 to 15 million Lagosians whilst you must have our citizens’ residents card. It will do a lot of things for us. It will help us plan, it will help us know where you are and it will help us know what we need to be doing at any point in time,” Sanwo-Olu said.
El-Rufai said for the better part of his first tenure he was collecting half salary, but Sanwo-Olu said “I am not collecting half salary but there is something we can take away. We need to look at our expenditure profile as chief executives of our State and we ask ourselves where can I cut the red tape? What I do away with and use to improve the revenue of my State and even make available a lot more money for my State to do well?”
“To date, I have not purchased any official vehicle from myself, any of my direct staff, or for my family from the government coffers. I said to my people that it’s not a fanciful thing that every governor must buy brand new vehicles when they do not need to. All of those millions are gone back into the treasury of the state and we are using it to develop the State,” Sanwo-Olu said.
He said Lagos must continue to remain resilient and competitive with global players in the world. “Lagos can stand in the test of time and compete with other cities in the world but because we are part of Nigeria we certainly need to also watch. At the sub-national level, we are also changing ourselves at the governor’s forum, as individual governors elected, and we are saying that we are going to use the best of our endeavour to ensure that we give the right dividend of democracy to our citizens because that is what they truly deserve”.
