Akinwunmi Ambode, Lagos State
governor, yesterday said that the first set of 5,000 new buses that would
replace ‘danfo’ bus will be unveiled within the next six months.
Ambode, spoke when students of
the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, United States of America, paid him a
courtesy visit at the Lagos House in Ikeja.
He said: “In the last one year,
we have decided that we must integrate rail, road water and air transportation
systems in such a way that the system of connectivity is improved upon and I
would like to have a direct partnership on how that can actually be actualised.
“Right now, we are cleaning out
all the yellow buses you see in the state. As we proceed in the next six months
and a span of three years, we are introducing 5,000 new buses of European
standard to actually clean up the city, because, if you want to grow the
economy of Lagos, transportation is key and then it’s a major infrastructure
for tourism itself.
“The question is: How do you move
23 million people on a daily basis from point A to point B with ease and
comfort? So, the way the city has been so designed in the last few years, the
city has actually concentrated on only one mode of transportation, which is
road transportation.
“There are eight million people walking on the
streets of Lagos every minute, did we create more points for them? The answer
is ‘no’. We have one-fifth of the state on water, are we doing effective water
transportation? The answer is ‘no’.
“The rail system is still under
construction in such a way that it can move mass number of people from one
point to another. That is why we have a whole lot of congestion on the road.
Ambode said the state government
had made series of intervention to improve road transportation network through
the creation of more bus terminals, lay-bys, bus stops to accommodate the
eventual take off of the Bus Reform Initiative.
The governor also disclosed that
the reforms in the water transportation system was ongoing and would take off
fully within the next six to nine months, as a means to encourage residents to
utilise it as an alternative means of transportation.
Ambode also listed urban
migration as one of the major challenges his administration was contending with
just as he revealed that about 86 persons enter into Lagos on a daily basis
without any plan to go back.
“People fly in from Ghana to come
and use our hospitals here in Lagos. So, we now have to sit down beyond what we
have learnt in school to look at the practical challenges of urban migration
and good governance and things we have to mitigate against a population that is
unaccounted for,” Ambode added.
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