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We have walked the familiar roads, and they have led us here. To keep walking that path is a betrayal of the next generation. Now, we must choose a new path: one in which tomorrow is better than yesterday, and in which those who seek public office become true stewards of the people. For of what use is politics if it does not deliver growth, prosperity, and security?
In 1979, Alhaji Lateef Jakande stood in this city, a few blocks from where we are gathered, and issued a warning that still haunts us today. He spoke of abject poverty beneath majestic flyovers and living conditions that were some of the worst in the federation. Nearly five decades later, those words have shifted from a historical warning to a daily reality for millions living and working in Lagos State.
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While a privileged few navigate this city in tinted SUVs, shielded from the heat and the dust, the rest of Lagos is drowning. We see it in the mountains of waste on our major roads and inner streets. We smell it in the stench of open sewers that breed cholera in our most vulnerable neighbourhoods. We feel it in the crushing cost of rent that has made the dream of a home a nightmare for our youth.
Following the Great Stink of 1858, London commissioned a revolutionary sewer system that, once completed in 1875, effectively ended the city’s cholera epidemics by separating waste from drinking water. A British engineer, Sir Joseph Bazalgette, designed this sanitation system that became the blueprint for effective waste management across the modern world. It was both genius-level engineering and unwavering political will.
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Yet, here we are in 2026, over 150 years later, in a city that calls itself a “megacity,” telling our people that the filth choking them is a “political fabrication” by opposition elements. The truth is that there is a total collapse of political imagination. The current ruling class in Lagos State has replaced public service with an insatiable appetite for wanton accumulation. It has built a system that rewards only sycophants. It has weaponised poverty by instituting policies that keep people perpetually in need, so they can easily be bought.
The result is now visible everywhere: a thick cloud of hopelessness driving our young men and women toward drugs, betting shops, and a life on the edge due to fear and uncertainty.
Good governance strives to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number. Currently, the ruling party is failing at both. I am here today because I refuse to accept that this is the best we can do. I refuse to believe that Lagos must always be a place where your progress depends on who you know, rather than what you can offer for the greater good.
We have walked the familiar roads, and they have led us here. To keep walking that path is a betrayal of the next generation. Now, we must choose a new path: one in which tomorrow is better than yesterday, and in which those who seek public office become true stewards of the people. For of what use is politics if it does not deliver growth, prosperity, and security?
We need politics that values a child in a public classroom as much as a graduate from an Ivy League institution. We need a government that sees waste management not as a contract to be awarded to a crony, but as a sacred duty to public health. We need leaders who are stewards, not masters.
Accordingly, as I remain steadfast in my vision for a better Eti Osa, today I hereby formally declare my membership of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), choosing responsibility over despondency. The work is hard, but the mission is clear. Let’s get to work.
God bless you all.
Ayodele Adio is a media and communications strategist.
