Mrs.Yemisi Busari is the running mate of Lagos PDP gubernatorial candidate, Mr Jimi Agbaje. She has traversed the length and
Can you tell us what you and Jimi Agbaje plan to do in Lagos if elected?
Let me say that the fundamentals of our campaign rest on a tripod-live ability, economy and future. And when we talk about Liveability. What are we talking about? How liveable is
We are saying how effective is our health sector. How effective is our schools? How is our primary health sector doing. Going by the traffic situation in Lagos, how liveable is Lagos. It takes you 4 hours to get to work. It takes you 4 hours to get back home.
How does that impact even on the health of Lagosians. It might interest you to know that the life expectancy for Lagosians is 49 years. Some of us are already going over time or extra time going by this statistics.
When you talk of Economy, we are saying how easy is it to do business in Lagos?
We want to create an enabling environment that would help commerce grow. We are worried about the future, about the youth. What kind of infrastructure do you have in place for their future, long-term planning, IT, highrate of unemployment. There are the things that bother. However, what we are bringing to the table and what we are saying is that we believe that Education is at the basis of all these and we are saying we are going to drive everything we are doing through Education. And this we have termed the Education Economy. We know there is 1,066 schools, both primary and secondary in Lagos and our thinking is that come May 2019 Insha Allah, the 1,066 school will form the kernel of jumpstanding the economy.
How?
We are going to start refurbishments of infrastructure for the schools, in doing this we are going to make sure there are schools leading to the schools, we are going to make sure we have water in the schools. Children must drink good water so that they don’t fall sick. We must make sure we provide power for the school and provide IT infrastructure. We are going to make sure we have Health centres in all the communities that have these schools.
We are going to have to drill down to the local governments and work with the local governments in doing all of these. What we are saying, as a ticket, is that a huge fraction of our budget is going to be placed on Education. We are looking at about 40% or there about or more will go to Education because we believe if we do this we would have a well educated workforce and citizens in our state and your economy will start to boom. We are in the 21st century, the knowledge economy. We must begin to do things as it is done in other climes. If we intend or want to move Lagos forward.
Many people see Lagos as an APC stronghold having been the party in power since 1999. How do you plan to win the APC in Lagos? Don’t you think its an uphill task?
Yes, the ruling party in Lagos now is the APC. However, we have also seen in other parts of Nigeria, where there have been elections and one party has lost and another party has come into power. We believe in our capabilities, and in what we offer the people of Lagos. We believe that with these, we would win these election in Lagos.
Is it true that your party the PDP and your campaign is suffering from serious funding problems?
We are doing what we are supposed to do and we know how parties fund campaigns. It is known worldwide that normally, for elections people raise funding. I am not sure that the candidates always have all of the monies that they need to spend, stored away somewhere. No. So the practice is that people who believe in you, people who believe in what you are trying to achieve, will come out and support you. And that has been the position with us in the PDP as I speak. At least, I speak for Lagos State and the party generally.
And the position has been that people have come out to put their money where their mouth is, so they believe in us and they have been supporting us. We are reaching out to our constituents. And the funds that are required are coming in for us to execute our activities.
