Inclusive projects crucial to good governance, disaster management, says Lagos official

Lagos State Chief Resilience Officer (CRO), Gbolahan Owodunni Oki, yesterday, declared that executing inclusive projects will help to institutionalise good governance and boost the state’s resilience to cope with the pressures of urban development, renewal and disasters.

Oki, therefore, charged the state Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to ensure that they initiate and execute robust and inclusive projects besides catering for the greater good of society

Speaking at a workshop for Lagos Resilience Strategy Liaison Officers of the MDAs, he stressed that for Lagos to continue to show resilience, MDAs must not work alone, while prioritising efficient service delivery in their daily activities.

“One of the factors of resilience is ability to work together. When a project is identified, it is expected that key agencies and principal partners involved review such projects.

“When such principal partners are identified, the affiliated agencies to work with to bring out the best from such projects are easily determined.”

Unlike one agency handling such projects and believing that they could succeed alone,” he stated. He argued that when building schools or hospitals, the ministries of education or health should not carry on the jobs alone, adding that other ministries like works and infrastructure could make their inputs, which reduce time, expenditure and ensure a better state.

Oki charged the liaison officers to participate actively in the workshop and consider it as an opportunity to review the implementation of MDAs’ Lagos Resilience Strategy initiative towards making adjustments where necessary or improving on the current structure, so that the state government’s vision for institutionalising good governance could be encapsulated in the ‘THEMES Agenda’.

“As an agency of government responsible for building resilience of the state, we will continue to monitor, supervise and objectively evaluate the implementation of government initiatives in all MDAs, towards ensuring that the initiatives are better implemented to improve the well-being of Lagos people,” he added.

A participant from the Drainage Services Office, Saheed Olarenwaju, said the impact of the resilience strategy was already being felt, as the effect of flooding in Lagos last year was not as intense as in 2019, stressing that the development only meant that the resilience strategy being implemented was already having a positive impact.