Sanwo-Olu: We’ll Ensure Food Security for All Lagosians

President Bola Tinubu recently paid a state visit to the People’s Republic of China during which he participated at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Beijing, the capital. On the sideline of the visit, Governor BabajideSanwo-Olu of Lagos state, who was one of the three governors on the President’s entourage, fielded some questions from DejiElumoye on what the Centre of Excellence stands to gain from President Tinubu’s visit.

We understand that you signed on behalf of Lagos State several MoUs with China in the course of the Presidential visit?

I want to commend and thank Mr. President for giving us in Lagos this very rare opportunity to join him on this important State visit to China and to attend the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). If he hadn’t given us this opportunity, all of the things that we see as successes would not even have come.

So, I want to thank him and thank the President of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping, for opening up the country for all of us, for hosting President Bola Tinubu, and for what I would call in my view, a very mutually beneficial relationship and visit to China.

But, to speak specifically to I, standing in here as the Governor of Lagos State and what we believe we are taking back home, and like you rightly observed, we directly have been able to take some Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) forward and that we are taking back home.

First, was the visit which President Tinubu was with us to CRCC, the parent company for CCEC. There, we were able to sign an agreement because we had been having some conversations before then on constructing and developing a second Ekpe-Lekki bridge.

Can you explain more on this?

You would remember that about two years ago, we went on a massive reconstruction of the Lekki-Epe expressway, where we constructed – all the way to Ajah, we are constructing six lanes, some places two lanes, up into six lanes. But, when you get to the tail end of this whole development, Epe still has one bridge that crosses from Lekki to Ekpe. 

So, we are going to build a second bridge given the level of vehicular movement that would happen on that corridor with the refinery and with trucks, it’s now more than important that we build that second bridge. That is an agreement we have completed and we believe that that will start very quickly when we get back home.

We understand that you also signed an energy agreement?

Yes, the other thing we signed with CCEC was something regarding energy transition which is where we have signed a collaborative engagement with them to power some facilities in our tertiary institutions – there are three of them, using solar panels which is part of the renewable energy component that we are talking about, getting power off the grid and bringing about better efficiency in terms of greenhouse emissions so, that is clean power that we will be installing in our Universities. These are well-signed up with China Civil Engineering Company (CCEC) in their parent office of China Railway Construction Company (CRCC).

Can you speak to the food security aspect?

The second MoU is also very critical. It is something regarding the food security of Lagos where the Ministry of Agriculture was able to sign an agreement with the biggest rice producer (commodity) company in the world, Wilmar, so, Wilmar has a solution in China called ‘Karry&Quila’. They are also the biggest paddy producers and millers out of China.

The strategic partnership there is around skills development. How do we ensure that we can improve the yield per hectare on our paddy growing capability in the State and the country? How do we encourage farmers, what are the seedlings, and the implements, what are the things that they need to do to improve the quality? We are not only trying to buy paddy, no, we actually want to transfer the technology back home where we will be able to develop those skills back in our space.

There is going to be a lot of knowledge transfer, a lot of training and retraining. Somewhere along the line, there could also be procurement of paddy, and brown rice, based on the approvals we get from the Federal Government. That is also being wrapped up and we are very excited about that. Because, for us, food security in Lagos is a cardinal deliverable. We have seen the pressure around the challenge of food in the country, so, it is as important to us as we are building roads or we are building schools to ensure that we can feed our people and we can feed them well.

The third MoU that we signed is also another landmark one. As a State Government, we have been able to develop on our own, from our balance sheet, the red line, and the blue line and we have completed it. We even met with some of our manufacturers who are doing additional rolling stocks that we are buying for the blue line and the red line.

But the interesting one is that from our transportation master plan, we have six rail infrastructure that we have developed. The one that everybody keeps talking about is the green line because it goes on the Lekki corridor all the way to the refinery to the deep sea port.

We are lucky that we have been having conversation with China Habor with their parent company, CCEC, so, we are able to bring that to conclusion in partnership with the Ministry of Finance Incorporated, a tripartite agreement that we signed between MOFI on the Federal Government side, Lagos State via LAMATA, and China Habor.

We believe that we are going very quickly into final feasibility study, design component to see how we start the construction of that rail component. That will in another way change the transformation infrastructure in Lagos completely.

So, we are excited with the fact that we are going home with all of these shopping list and there are other several conversations we had in energy, renewables and so on.

More importantly, we have been able to use this trip to galvanise direct interest of Chinese businesses in Nigeria and vice versa. There has been a lot of Nigerian businesses, businessmen that were also around and I imagine that they have been able to hand-hold each other and cross transactions that would bring about meaningful development.

What is your impression about President Xi Jinping’s remarks?

I think one final note to also talk about is the delivery at the opening of FOCAC where the Chinese President laid out a 10-point agenda on their global vision to support and to create a real partnership with Africa. And the kind of numbers we see and hear, there could be collaraborative effort coming to Africa, strategically, Nigeria should position for a 20 to 25 percent in all verticals, be it in infrastructure, training and support, commerce, and Industry, technology, and agriculture. We will begin to see a mutually beneficial relationship from both sides. It’s a long journey so, it is not a place you can come and waste your time and I can assure you that we haven’t wasted our time at all.

So, we are excited that we are going back home and with our heads up knowing fully well that we have been able to create a deeper better relationship with our Chinese counterparts here in Beijing.