By Dotun Ibiwoye

The signing of the bill establishing an agency for the management and maintenance of infrastructure assets of Lagos State, by the Governor Babatunde Fashola, last week has continued to elicit reactions from residents in the state.

The governor had said that the setting-up of the agency became imperative as a way to create employment opportunities, especially for young job seekers, who will be saddled with the responsibility for maintenance of public utilities.

Fashola affirmed that Nigeria had acquired problems of a lack of maintenance culture and highlighted the inherent opportunity there by turning what appears to be a problem into a solution.

According to him: “The Law, whose obligations, are already operational in principle in the State,  has an inherent opportunity that Government has sought to harness to turn what appears to be a problem into a solution.

“I signed the Executive Order in 2010 by executive action. Their duty as an Office of Facility Management is domiciled in the Ministry of Works,” adding that he was motivated by the fact that the opportunities inherent in maintenance would create jobs for the teeming unemployed in the State.

He added that “The classroom teachers will fill those forms and pass on, through the school system, the problems in their classrooms and from there we can gather information about what is wrong with the school and during the long school holidays or Christmas break, contractors can come in to fix those things.

“When people see broken roofs, broken ceilings, street lights that are not working, traffic lights that are not working, it is because maintenance systems were not put in place. So this law delights me to no end.”

The governor said between the 2010 and now, government has ensured that public hospitals such as the Maternal and Childcare Centres are being cleaned and maintained adding that the small businesses that handle the contracts hire cleaners, electricians and other artisans. “This is how jobs are created”, he said.

Explaining how these maintenance contracts are being taken care of in the annual budget, Governor Fashola, pointed that Capital Expenditure in the annual budget in the early part of the life of the administration was as high as 63 percent at one point, but has been coming down gradually over the years, because the Recurrent side is now going up since built infrastructure have to be maintained.

“Apart from Overhead, we now have to maintain buildings that we built, wirings and so on and so forth. So this is the way we believe that policy and law can be used to create jobs especially in the area of maintenance of public assets”, the Governor said.

He also stated that most of what the obligations of the law will impose are already being carried out by the Office of Facility Management.

Meanwhile reacting to the law, a resident Maxwell Apkofure said: “This aganey is a great one, if it will work effectively as said by government.The only issue that I have is that these agencies are so much in Lagos state, so I feel some of them are just duplication of agencies.”

Another resident Olatilewa Makinde said: “As the general election draws nearer, we will definitely see new things. The general election is about two months away from now, so this agency might have issues if another party or government comes in. Who knows? They might not subscribe to it.”