Sanwo-Olu drops ‘His Excellency’ prefix for ‘Mr. Governor’

• Lagos activates emergency operation centre to curtail gastroenteritis spread

Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu yesterday dropped the prefix ‘His Excellency.’It came 11 days after he declared at an event that the title made him uncomfortable and promised to jettison it.The governor, in a statement, said that he should not be called His Excellency.

Sanwo-Olu at the King’s Court Parish of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Lagos, on Sunday, October 27, 2019, while addressing worshippers said: “I don’t want title in front of my name. I am actually going to come up with an executive order. This Excellency thing, I think it is when you have finished and if you earn it, then you should be called Excellency. If you haven’t earned it; if you haven’t delivered, there is nothing excellent in the Excellency.

“You are just Mr. Governor for crying out loud and it is only when you have finished the kingdom assignment, when you have finished God’s work in the chosen place that you have been called to do that people can say in truth that you are a good representation and you deserve to be called excellency,” Sanwo-Olu said.

So, it was not surprising yesterday when the governor formally announced that the prefix, His Excellency, should no longer be added to his name. Sanwo-Olu said he preferred to be addressed as Mr. Governor. He said: “In the last five months that I have been privileged to exercise the mandate freely given to me by the great and hardworking people of Lagos State, it has come to my consciousness to review certain features of citizen-government relations, which impede the genuine expression of the democratic spirit of our society and the meaningful exercise of the sovereignty of our people.
 
“Fellow Lagosians, I have come to the conclusion that for us to change the narrative of governance, we have to strike down this seeming symbol of executive arrogance that commands popular obeisance and undermines the democratic role of citizens as the masters of those they have elected and appointed to serve. It is a conviction that I believe will send the right signals to all politicians and civil servants that service to the people has brought us here. It is the duty we are obliged to do. It is the responsibility that we bear wherever we find ourselves; whenever we are called to serve.”

Meanwhile, to curtail the spread of incidence of gastroenteritis outbreak, the Lagos State government has activated an Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) to co-ordinate response against the disease, as well as other infectious diseases.Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi, who stated this during the inauguration of the centre yesterday, said the EOC was a command and control centre headquartered in the Ministry of Health to co-ordinate and fine-tune logistics and resources in response to the increase in number of diarrhea and vomiting recorded in the past weeks in five local councils .

He said the EOC, made up of representatives from the Ministry of Health, Primary Health Care Board, Health Service Commission, Lagos Environmental Protection Agency (LASEPA), World Health Organisation and Central Public Health Laboratory, among others, would be meeting on daily basis, collating results, reviewing plans and interventions, as well as suggesting and co-ordinating the implementation of measures to effectively curtail the spread of the disease and manage future occurrences promptly and effectively.