IgbereTV reports that the Lagos State government is planning to launch the first of several planned intra-city lines by the end of 2020. This is due to the frequent traffic congestion experienced on lagos roads, which leads to loss of time and productivity.
The governor of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, on Monday hinted the plan while speaking at a forum on “Public Private Innovation for Sustainable Cities” organised by the Embassy of France in Lagos, stressing that the state was pushing ahead with the work on the Lagos Metro Rail service to make it happen.
Represented at the occasion by his Deputy, Dr. Kadri Obafemi Hamzat, he said that, transportation was critical to the success of any urban area and that with its limited land mass, the future of Lagos lay primarily in viable alternative to overdependence on road transportation.
He said: “For this reason, our focus for the medium and long term is water and rail transportation. Fortunately, we have a sizeable mass of water, the Lagos lagoon running across the state. We are ramping up the rollout of public water transport service, while also encouraging the private sector to invest in the sector,” he said.
Also, he said, “As the Chief Executive of one of the fastest growing cities in the world, planning and envisioning the future of this sprawling mass of people occupies a significant portion of my waking moment. It is indeed what I was elected to do. Lagos is an important city for many reasons. It is an economic magnet, not just for Nigerians from across the country but even across all of Africa. It accounts for roughly a fifth of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product and by itself the GDP of Lagos is larger than that of all but six or seven African countries.”
The French Ambassador to Nigeria, Jerome in his opening remark, spoke of an Africa-France Summit tagged, “La cite des solutions” a trade fair for project leaders across sectors private and public alike, to debate collectively about the future of cities and how to make them habitable, sustainable and proffer solutions and action plans to combat challenges of climate change demographic growth and urbanisation.
