Olajide Adediran, the governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Lagos State, has unveiled a policy agenda he will implement if elected in 2023.
Adediran released his policy agenda tagged ‘My Vision For Lagos’, Wednesday. He said he would change the face of governance in Lagos and make it a wealthy state in truth as against its current status of being a wealthy state only on paper.
He promised that the huge Lagos revenue would reflect in the daily living of the people by using it to aggressively repair all existing state roads, building iconic bridges that would give Lagos the facelift as a mega city of repute.
“We will involve private sectors in project financing via Public-Private Partnership such as build operate and transfer (BOT) and other concessions, but with the interest of Lagosians at the centre of it all,” he said.
“Any serious government will take the education of our children very seriously. Our solution to taking our children out of the streets and having them back in school would be to declare a state of emergency in our education sector and proceed to make primary and secondary education completely free and compulsory. How? Our administration will provide free school uniforms and learning aids to all pupils in our primary and secondary schools.
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“Majority of these children are out of school because their parents are unable to afford ancillary school requirements such as uniforms and learning aids that are presently not part of the free education scheme of this current administration. These uniforms will be produced by local tailors in all local governments.
“This means local tailors within Ikeja local government will sew uniforms for all pupils and students schooling within the confines of Ikeja local government. This way, we would also have succeeded in boosting the economy, especially the earning power of the locals all at a cost no more than N24b in a fiscal year.
“Another reason for having over 2 million out of school children in Lagos is lack of infrastructure and human resources…our immediate plan would be to first go into partnership with private schools and ensure these children are admitted and spread across the over 18,000 private schools in Lagos, among which only 5,000 are registered, in exchange for tax incentives while we embark on infrastructural renewal and upgrades in our public schools.
“We will address the shortage of school teachers by being the first to implement the 65years retirement age and 40 years of service. We will also bring back those that have retired since the signing of this law to complete their years of service.
“Currently in our health facilities, especially at the general hospitals, we are confronted by the unpalatable experience of patients littering the premises in the name of no hospital beds to accommodate them.
“Pending when we will provide adequate infrastructure, we will embark on the automation of all health care facilities in Lagos, both public and private to ensure that no hospital transfers any patient to the general hospital until such facility has successfully secured a bed space for such patient and we will also eradicate reception areas at all Emergency Units.
“This way, we would have succeeded in ridding the premises of our general hospitals of littering patients and saving more lives. In addition to this, health insurance will be made compulsory and available to the less privileged and vulnerable for free, to improve access and affordability.”
Adediran said that his administration would create technovation hubs across the five divisions of Lagos where youths would be trained to acquire digital skills, adding that he would facilitate tech start-up support to leverage opportunities.
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