The recently raised N85.14bn in the series two bond issuance for the purpose of improving physical and social infrastructure in Lagos State attests to an unalloyed confidence of investors in the administration of Governor Akinwunmi Ambode.
Being the largest bond issuance in the Nigerian capital market and coming at a time of economic downturn, it is instructive to put the denouement in astute perspectives.
First, it takes a leadership prowess to convince prudent investors to buy into this ambitious bond issuance which has the potential to reinvent a significant part of infrastructural gap in Lagos State.
Second, the quantum of this investment would tax the ingenuity of the governor and his team as it inevitably places Lagos on the accountability radial.
It is gratifying to know that this initiative is towards infrastructure renewal, an imperative so compelling by the rural-urban population drift that has overstretched the state of the available infrastructure to its outer limits.
Governor Ambode would do justice to a revolutionary delivery of service by changing the template of technocratic priorities from construction of roads to building power infrastructure that would make Lagos the best investment destination in Africa.
The epileptic state of power in Lagos is a major disincentive to appropriate investment drive, even if all the road infrastructure is completed with all its appurtenances, these are not sufficient for an industrial headway.
Lagos has no business still connected to the national grid that is moribund for lack of funds.
If the governor can channel this newly acquired funds to building independent power infrastructure
for Lagos, posterity will be so kind to him rather than follow the stale project template of road construction common in almost all the states of the federation that has not translated into industrial dénouements.
Power would serve as a gravitational pool for needed investments that would service other infrastructural exigencies like roads, light rail and social infrastructure.
Bukola Ajisola,
Victoria Island, Lagos State,
bukymany@yahoo.com
source: http://ift.tt/2fPzgnj
http://ift.tt/eA8V8J
