Akinwunmi Ambode, governor of Lagos state, says he plans to take commercial buses, popularly known as Danfo, off Lagos roads before the end of the year.
He explained that this is to create a more efficient, “well-structured and world class mass transportation system that would facilitate ease of movement within the city”.
Ambode also promised that his administration would soon roll out a comprehensive environmental sanitation policy that would make the city clean without much burden on the people in terms of taxes.
He said this at the 14th annual lecture of the Centre for Values in Leadership (CVL) at Muson Centre in the Onikan area of the state.
“When I wake up in the morning and see all these yellow buses and see Okada and all kinds of tricycles and then we claim we are a mega city, that is not true and we must first acknowledge that that is a faulty connectivity that we are running,” he said.
“Having accepted that, we have to look for the solution and that is why we want to banish yellow buses this year. We must address the issue of connectivity that makes people to move around with ease and that is where we are going.
“For instance, people going from Ikorodu to CMS have started leaving their cars at home because the buses are very convenient and so why can’t we do that for other places? Yes, we don’t have the money to do that but we can go to the capital market and then improve on the technology of collection of fares and that will encourage investors and then the city will change.”
He said government was also embarking on massive reform in waste management system, expressing optimism that the plan will fully be actualized by July this year.
“We are also embarking on massive reform in the waste and sanitation management system. I don’t like the way the city is and the Private Sector Participants (PSP) collectors are not having enough capacity to do it but again should I tax people to death? The answer is no,” he said.
“I don’t want to tax people and so we need this partnership with the private sector so that they can invest in the sanitation management of the city and in no time maybe by July, the city will change forever.”
He added that massive infrastructures were being put in place in critical sectors of the economy.
Ambode said he had remained focused on some issues such as infrastructure, security, job creation, power, adoption of technology “as an enabler and driving investment through ease of doing business”.