The All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, said on Friday that he transformed Lagos from a jungle to a megacity during his eight-year rule as governor of the State.
Tinubu ruled Lagos as governor from 1999 to 2007.
The former governor stated this during a documentary aired on Channels Television.
The APC standard bearer said he laid the groundwork for successive governors of Lagos State to build upon, in order to transform the city into what it is today.
He said: “When I came in as governor of Lagos State in 1999, Lagos was a jungle. It was a completely uncivilised environment. There were refuse dumps everywhere, schools without roofs, hospitals without ambulances and oxygen tanks to save lives. It was in a very bad state.
“We started to put things in place gradually and the state began to take shape. What we did was to take the liabilities in the state and converted them to assets.
“The Civic Centre to Oriental Hotel area on Victoria Island was refuse dump back then, but look at what the area has turned to today. It is only the older ones that would remember all these.”
The documentary revealed how Tinubu reorganized the State’s revenue system, and by the time he stepped down as governor in 2007, Lagos had become totally independent of the Federal government in terms of revenue generation, having previously fully relied on federal allocations.
“When Tinubu took over in 1999, Lagos was bankrupt. The internally generated revenue at the time was N600million monthly and the state was completely dependent on the Federal government for it.
“When Tinubu was leaving office in 2007, the IGR of Lagos was N7billion monthly. Babatunde Fashola built on that legacy to N15billion monthly. This was made possible by the short, medium and long-term goals that Tinubu had laid down for the State in terms of revenue and wealth generation,” it added.