Political office holders in Nigeria are fond of travelling abroad. When it gets to the extreme with some of them, the media say they are junketing around the world. What provokes the majority of the people is not the amount of money usually expended on the trips. They are particularly angry that the leaders do not care to replicate some of the good things they see and enjoy abroad when they return home.

But, unknown to many, such a trip once made a former governor to reflect deeply and ‘import’ one of the wonders he saw abroad. That is the first Governor of Lagos State, Brigadier-General Mobolaji Johnson.  It  was during an official trip he made to the US that he got the inspiration to build the Badagry Express Road as it is today.

This is part of the stewardship that  Johnson renders in his autobiography titled Lagos State – My Life of Service with Integrity. The book  co-authored by inspirational speaker and writer, Kola Olutimehin, is, according to the publishers, Makeway Publishing Ltd.,  a story that reveals the results of character building.

“Despite his initial setbacks, Brigadier-General Johnson  rose to become one of the most loyal and respected leaders of Nigeria. This entertaining autobiography provides a mixture of both the funny moments and the serious side of the life of this officer and a gentleman who operated with integrity and discipline,” the publishers write in the blurb of the work.

In the story of the author’s inspiring trip to America, however, he recalls in chapter 10 – The Acts in Lagos State: What we Did to Stand Tall – how he got a special invitation from the American government in 1969. According to him, he had developed a good relationship with one Mr. Carter, who headed the US Information Service office in Lagos. Carter was responsible for the invitation to the God’s own country.

The story continues on Page 145: “As part of my trip to the US, Mr. Carter requested that I visited his family in Philadelphia, although he wasn’t going to be there. As we drove, I was fascinated by the network of roads that linked Washington to Philadelphia. ‘Oh, my God,’ I thought. ‘These are precisely what inter-state roads ought to be like.’

That was how Johnson stopped the planning work that had been going on on Badagry Road and initiated the process of redesigning it based on his experience during the trip. Although the redesigning took about two years,  the road then named Route Achievement came out in 1974 as what the authors call Nigeria’s first ultra-modern highway.

Although My Life of Service with Integrity documents other achievements and challenges of the author when he was governor, it also extensively digs into his parentage, childhood, education, military career and some of the major issues or events that shaped Nigerian destiny.

With the foreword written by General Yakubu Gowon, who appointed Johnson as governor when he (Yakubu) was the head of state, the stories of the author’s life come under such chapters as The Johnson’s Story; My Shaky Beginning, Clarity of Hope,  I Took a Daring Step, I Found my True Love, Strife Within the Army, Unscheduled Retirement and After Governorship, What Next?