By Olu Fasan

A FEW years ago, I met some local government chairmen and councillors from Lagos State. They came to London for a week’s training, and the organisers invited me to teach them the principles and practices of public policy and local governance.

I spent two days with them. In those two days, I learned a lot about politics and governance in Lagos State. The chairmen and councillors described how little governing took place at the local level, and how the politics of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, and the governance of the state were based on personal rule; that is, on the fear, money and patronage of one man: Bola Tinubu, former governor of the state; currently, an APC presidential aspirant.

Since that encounter, the insightful experience has never left me; in fact, it has shaped my views, buttressed by further evidence, about the utterly discreditable nature of Lagos State APC’s politics, the entrenched culture of bad governance, both at the local and state levels, and effects of Tinubu’s omnipresence and strongman’s grip on party politics and governance in the state.

Let’s start with local governance. The chairmen and councillors told me that little public service was being delivered because they spent their money and time meeting people’s personal needs. People always came to them for money to pay their children’s school fees, meet child-christening or funeral expenses and satisfy sundry other personal needs.

Why, I asked, did they not focus on projects that benefitted the whole community, instead of meeting individual needs. They looked at me and laughed. If they built public infrastructure but failed to provide “stomach infrastructure”, they would lose elections, they said. The people who cared about public infrastructure and good governance hardly cared about electoral politics and rarely voted; whereas those who cared about stomach infrastructure were the core voters, and they always rewarded their benefactors!

So, extreme poverty or neediness and stomach infrastructure at the local level, call it patronage at the state level, define politics and governance in Lagos State. Which is why money politics is deeply entrenched in Lagos, and why the most powerful man in the state’s politics, Tinubu, is stupendously rich and has an overwhelming power of patronage. Truth is, Tinubu’s wealth and patronage power are the main sources of his political dominance, of the utter loyalty and absolute fear he commands from APC members in Lagos State.

For instance, although far away in London, the chairmen and councillors spoke in hushed tones about Tinubu as if spies were around. They said that, metaphorically speaking, Tinubu knew what was going on in their bedrooms, and that they owed their political future entirely to him: if he said it was over, it was over! Really? Why didn’t they rebel? I asked. They stared at me and guffawed: “Rebel? Not if you want to remain a councillor or a chairman”!

The above recollection returned to me recently when I watched a viral video on You Tube where an APC councillor and council leader, Osayande Gbinigie, spoke at a seminar about local politics, democracy and governance in Lagos. Everything he said corroborated, and reinforced, what the chairmen and councillors told me in London.

Stressing the strong links between poverty, stomach infrastructure and voting, Gbinigie said that councillors spent a lot of their resources meeting people’s personal needs, stating that this was critical to getting their votes. Even so, voter-turnouts are extremely low. “Do you know that I emerged in my ward with only 400 votes and the population of the area is not less than 5,000?” he asked rhetorically, adding that in some polling booths as few as five people voted!

Of course, abysmal voter-turnouts raise questions about the legitimacy of Lagos State elections. But they also raised a curious political question: if, as we are told, Lagosians love Tinubu passionately, why are they not voting enthusiastically for his party and candidates? For instance, in the 2019 presidential election, Lagos State had the lowest voter-turnout in the country, with just 20 per cent! Clearly, what matters most to Lagos State APC, the party that has ruled the state since 1999, is just victory, whatever the turnout. After all, a win is a win, but a win can come with a huge legitimacy gap!

Anyway, back to Councillor Gbinigie. He portrayed Tinubu’s politics as money-based and said what made him popular is that “he is not somebody that eats alone”. One of the panellists interjected: “So, the name of the game is eating”! Gbinigie blushed. “Eh, eating is the name,” he said, adding: “And when you are eating, you don’t talk”. He said that the party valued loyalty – the ability to keep one’s mouth shut – more than competence.

This piece is not about Tinubu’s presidential ambition. We will come to that in the coming weeks. Rather, it’s about the political atmosphere and governance culture he created, nurtured and continues to foster in Lagos State. I argue that it’s misguided, dangerous and unpatriotic to wish that Lagos State APC’s politics be replicated at the centre.

In 2018, a commentator and Lagos APC insider, Kayode Ogundamisi, wrote about the “mafioso nature of the APC in Lagos”. He said that “Lagos State civil service is an extension of the party structure”, adding that “hardly would you find a Lagos State civil servant who is not a card-carrying member of the party”. He went on to say that “Lagos APC has political leaders who depend on state resources”.

He’s right. Lagos State civil service is utterly politicised – the state’s civil servants recently launched a campaign for Tinubu’s presidential ambition – and the party’s politicians leech off a lavish patronage system. Truth is, Lagos APC’s politics is personalised, dependent on the wealth and patronage power of one man and based on a feudal lord-serfs relationship. It’s not an acceptable model in any civilised democracy. And no one must wish it on Nigeria!