The candidate of the Action Democratic Party (ADP) for the Lagos State governorship election, Babatunde Gbadamosi, says the first thing he will fix if elected as governor is public sector pay.
This, according to him, is because there is a massive gap between what public sector workers are paid and the kind of service they are expected to offer.
Gbadamosi said this on Sunday during the Lagos governorship debate, organised by The Platform.
Consequently, he plans to up the pay of workers once he gets into power.
He said, “The first thing I am going to be looking at very quickly is public sector pay. What we pay as civil servants and what we demand from them – there is a massive gulf between the two.
“Our civil servants are very disgracefully paid, and we want them to deliver the 21st Century service to us in Lagos State. That is not going to happen at the sort of pay levels we are offering them right now. So, we are going to upgrade civil service pay very quickly.”
Second on Gbadamosi’s agenda is the traffic situation which has been a source of concern for Lagosians over the years.
“We are going to be looking at traffic – simultaneously, at the same time (with public sector pay). We are going to be looking at the traffic situation because we are spending too many man hours in traffic,” he said.
In his estimation, every Lagosian spends an average of six hours every day going to work and back.
“That has got to stop,” he said, adding, “We are going to introduce high volume, high-speed passenger ferries across Lagos.”
Beyond the two issues, Gbadamosi explained that power was critical to everything.
“Thirdly, we’ll be looking at power because without power, we can do nothing. When God wanted to create the earth, he started with light. He said, ‘Let there be light’ and light was and then everything else came after,” the ADP candidate said.
To fix the problem, he promised that if elected, his administration would “put light in a minimum eight local governments within 18 months as part of our Lagos Integrated Regeneration Plan, an emergency plan that we will put together”.
