By Aliu Akoshile
There are moments in the life of a city when it must decide whether to keep building higher or to build deeper. Lagos has spent the last 26 years building higher. This is understandable.
When everyone thought Lagos was ungovernable after the Lateef Jakande transformational epoch, Bola Ahmed Tinubu as Governor in 1999 gave the state its inimitable masterplan and a solid foundation. Babatunde Fashola from 2007 gave it the engineering discipline to prove that plan could work. Akinwunmi Ambode from 2015 sustained it, while Babajide Sanwo-Olu from 2019 gave Lagos the hard infrastructure of a 21st century megacity — the Blue Line, the Red Line, Lekki Deep Seaport, and of course Dangote’s world-class Refinery.
A casual observer would be tempted to ask: What is left to build? A fair question, no doubt. Dr. Kadri Obafemi Hamzat, Lagos Deputy Governor and the All Progressives Congress candidate for the 2027 governorship election, gave the insightful but profoundly unsexy answer when he unveiled his manifesto, “The Lagos PROMISE”, on October 30.
I have met Dr. Hamzat only once. As MD/Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Times newspaper, I was part of the interactive session Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu and Dr. Hamzat held with media chiefs at the commencement of their tenure in 2019.
In that gathering full of media owners and leaders, what struck me about Dr. Hamzat was not power, but presence. He came across as amiable, self-effacing, trustworthy and rigorously cerebral. He listened more than he spoke, and spoke in systems, data and deliverables, not slogans. You could tell this was a man who would rather fix the drainage than cut the ribbon.
That memory has stayed with me for seven years, and it is why The Lagos Promise does not surprise me. It is the same man – consistent, deep, prepared.
As someone born in Lagos, whose father lived over 100 years in this city and whose uncle stood on campaign rostrums with the legendary Chief Obafemi Awolowo in the 70s, and having spent about 40 years of my early life navigating its streets and splendour, I have seen Lagos when it was written off as ungovernable, and I have seen it become the eighth largest economy in Africa.
Because I know the state, I know what it needs next. Lagos does not need noise. It does not need experiment. It needs a quiet, competent systems engineer who understands that governance is not theatrical performance, but job delivery.
Dr. Hamzat said Lagos needs an operating system. He branded it “The Lagos Promise (Ileri Eko)”: a 100-point manifesto built on 31 chapters and seven pillars that spell PROMISE – People First, Renewal, Opportunity, Machinery of Government, Inclusion, Security and Resilience, Everyday Dignity. I have read political manifestos from across Nigeria since 1999. Most are poetry. This Ileri Eko is engineering.
What struck me first was not the 100 promises, but the daring disclaimer. Hamzat told Lagosians they can hold his feet to the fire on 87 of those promises, while 13 are aspirations that will require negotiation with the Federal Government, other institutions and the courts. No candidate has ever volunteered his own limits with such civil clarity and creative candour.
That honesty is rare because Nigerian politics has always rewarded grandiosity: free education for all, free healthcare for all, free housing for all, and similar bogus promises politicians regale us with at every electoral cycle.
Hamzat, a systems engineer with a PhD, chose to do the opposite. He is redefining the system and its boundary conditions. That is classical political re-engineering. He promised to publish a scorecard and establish a monitoring council against which residents can measure him. In a society where governance is often judged by the eye, Hamzat wants to be judged by raw data.
In my estimation, the core thesis of “The Lagos Promise” is that Lagos’ next problem is not lack of infrastructure. The state needs systems integration.
Take his transport plan. Dr. Hamzat does not just promise more buses. He promises to grow the fleet from 1,000 to 4,000 buses to move one million people daily, to extend the Blue Line to Okokomaiko, to connect Blue and Red Lines at the National Theatre station, to develop 140 kilometres of additional waterways, rehabilitate 27 ferry terminals and acquire 75 electric ferries, and then, this is the key, to introduce a single integrated ticket for road, rail and water. That is not a transport project. That is a mobility operating system. The kind that makes London work.
On governance reform, he promises within his first 100 days to create by executive order a Public Service Delivery Office chaired by the governor himself, which will publish baseline figures for every pledge, and to establish a Lagos Wealth Fund with an independent board that will publish its accounts to preserve resources for future generations. He also promises service standards: complaints acknowledged within 48 hours, responded to within seven days, and resolved within 30 days.
These are not populist gestures. They are institutional anchors. Wealth funds are how Norway and Singapore turned resources into intergenerational wealth. Service charters are the surest way to kill the culture of “come back tomorrow” in government offices.
His social policy follows the same logic. His first bill will be for a Child Protection and Nutrition Agency to ensure every child under 18 is either in school or learning a trade. His health plan is not just to build hospitals like the 150-bed Massey Children’s Hospital, the 280-bed general hospital, general hospitals in Ogombo and Ibeju-Lekki, and the upgrade of 100 primary health centres, but to expand Ilera Eko health insurance to cover one in three Lagos residents.
This is a shift from brick-and-mortar governance to systems governance. In Dr. Obafemi Hamzat, I see that rare combination of native intelligence, institutional memory and technical depth. His 100-point Lagos Promise is not a mere manifesto but a maintenance manual for a megacity.
I am filled with optimism that Lagos voters have in him an exceptional candidate, and I am eager to see him settle into office after a resounding victory at the polls in February 2027, to continue and complete the re-engineering of Lagos governance.
Lagos has built structures. Now, with Hamzat, it must build systems for sustainable development.
Aliu Akoshile is Publisher/Editor-in-Chief of NatureNews.
