Lagos State Deputy Governor, Dr Obafemi Hamzat has said that the state government will continue to engage, interact, and communicate with the youth, expressing the belief that this would enable them to collaborate and partner with the government in achieving the set desired goals and programmes.
The deputy governor gave this position on Tuesday while speaking on Arise TV programme ‘The Morning Show’, pointing out that that the Lagos State government had been engaging the youth across different sectors to get them involved in how things were being done and run in the country.
According to him, Lagos is committed to providing the youth with what he described as “cutting-edge facilities and technology,”with which is empowering them to reach their full potential, including the desire to drive innovation and growth in the state.
The deputy governor highlighted some of the initiatives the current administration had put in place to ensure that the youth were engaged and unleashed their potentials for prosperity, noting that some of the youth in the state were being sponsored to different countries to see how things were done.
Hamzat said that the Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu administration would be remembered for laudable projects that it had embarked upon as a legacy of the administration, saying that these include road infrastructure, agriculture and food security, and transportation involving road, water, and rail, among other projects.
He stated that there was no local government in Lagos that the present administration was not doing tangible projects on a regular basis, reiterating that Lagos is the only sub-sovereign in the world to build rail on its balance sheet.
“What we think of is that we cannot be a metropolitan state without a rail and finishing the Blue and Red lines is our target. Let us be able to move our people conveniently.
“Now we are moving instead of 70,000 per month to about 288,00 people, we are building jetties, among others,” the deputy governor said.
He, therefore, encouraged the private sector to participate in the different projects the state government was doing, that were aimed at developing the state economy.
Speaking further, Hamzat stressed the state’s commitment to enhancing local agricultural production, saying that this would foster economic growth, address food price inflation, and promote food security.
According to him, the state is producing enough tomatoes in Badagry that will feed over 20 percent of Lagosian, saying that the government was keen to scale up the production further, aiming to make this essential commodity more widely available to consumers across the state.
The deputy governor, while condemning the comment made by “Lagospedia” on X formerly known as Twitter, with the hashtag #Igbomustgo#, said there was no room for ethnic bigotry in Lagos State, adding that such a comment had no place in the policy direction of the present administration in the state, even as he maintained that “Lagos is a place where people of divergent tribes co-exist peacefully and the government will not allow faceless people to divide them.”
He said that though some people were trying to do whatever it takes to divide the state, but quickly assured that the government would never allow that to happen, noting that sometimes, some of the people who put this type of thing out on social media were not even in the country.
Hamzat further assured that the unwavering commitment of the present administration to protecting the lives and property of all Lagos residents, was not negotiable, emphasizing that the government under the leadership of Governor Sanwo-Olu was working with security agencies to fish out the people behind the tweet as he assured the citizens of their safety.
“These faceless people just came up and said the Igbo must leave, this is absolute nonsense which is why the governor immediately denounced it.
“Lagos is accommodating and that is who we are. Even when we were young, we’ve all lived together peacefully and there is no need for people to become ethnic bigots,” the deputy governor said.
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