Plotting a pleasanter future

updated: Monday 30-03-2009

SPEND an evening at the tree-lined Seaside Bar on Ikoyi Island and itis possible to come away with a rosy view of Lagos. Revellers clink bottles and gaze across shimmering water. A motor-cruiser festooned with twinkling lights swishes by, music booming.

Spotlights illuminate a row of plush new waterside flats on neighbouring Victoria Island;cranes, radio masts and fast-rising hotels dot the skyline.

Daily reality is less alluring. Lagos has long suffered from overcrowding, jammed and broken roads, erratic supplies of power, violent crime, floods, filth and smog.

Lagosians are often dynamic, thrusting and entrepreneurial—but even some locals concede that their city is exhausting. Stretched awkwardly over islands and swamp,Nigeria’s former capital struggles to serve both as west Africa’s finance-cum-business hub and as one of the region’s biggest ports.

It has fast outpaced efforts to plan for growth. A recent census found 8m residents, making Lagos Africa’s most populous city after Cairo; the UN expects that figure to reach 20m by the end of the next decade. The governor of Lagos state, Babatunde Fashola, thinks it will get even bigger.

Bedecked in a traditional outfit topped by a jaunty red cap, he says that Lagos must plan to be a “mega-city” of 40m souls by mid-century.

What chance has he of crafting a functioning city rather than a conurbation of slums? In office for two years, Mr Fashola can claim alittle progress. “We have been able to make the wheels turn quicker,” he says, pointing to new roads, more traffic lights, street lamps and wardens. Now he has plans for public transport: a fleet of 40,000 fume-belching buses, he says, will be overhauled and two commuter rail lines built with the help of private contractors. Ground is due to be broken for the railway in August, as contractors bid for business.The first trains, he promises, will be trundling within three years.

Crime, including armed robbery, is down sharply, he says. Illegal housing has been cleared from the city centre, in some places replaced by parks and trees, so crooks find it harder to evade police. Mr Fashola also points to new cars, boots, CCTV cameras and increased allowances for the city’s 3,000 police. Robbers in boats who once whizzed along city creeks have been chased away.

Efforts are being made to stir up civic pride and reduce the smog caused by fires, by collecting rubbish and waste more reliably. Mr Fashola is also committed to fighting graft; he has published his e-mail address and telephone number for complaining Lagosians.

So far, locals are fond of their governor and his populist touch. He benefited when the economy boomed. But falling oil revenue will mean less public money in the next year or two, and the private sort will be harder to raise too. He plans a fund worth 50 billion naira ($340m) to pay for public-private partnerships to upgrade local power stations,run new train companies and so on. But as the world economy slumps, private partners may be hard to find—and his popularity trickier to sustain.

Bank, Customer argue over missing N3.2m - I didn’t authorise transfer of fund from my saving to current account Customer -Your cheque leaflet was used and the signature on it was yours - Bank

Prof. Charles Soludo,
CBN GovernorIT is not clear whether Mr. Lawal Abdul Adeniyi, an Ibadan-based businessman said his early morning prayers when he woke up on October 24, 2008. This is because two unrelated incidents, which he would never forget in his life, happened to him on that day. Yemi Banjo reports.

On the fateful day, as he was preparing for his normal routine, he received a call that his driver and a maid who took his child to school were involved in an accident within Ibadan. Though no life was lost in the lone accident, Lawal rushed to the scene of the accident to ensure that his maid who sustained an injury was taken to a hospital for treatment, while the vehicle was taken from the scene of the accident to Iyaganku police station for documentation and issuance of police report. After obtaining a police report, the process of repairing and replacing the damaged auto-parts took the rest of the day.

By the time he returned home, he was tired and decided to lie on the settee in his sitting-room, to have a short rest before having his dinner. His brief nap on the settee was interrupted by a transaction alert, which was sent by his bankers, the Guaranty Trust Bank Plc (GTB), to his cellophone handset, informing him that a whopping sum of N3.2 million had been withdrawn from his account at the bank. The message dazed him like a thunderbolt, leaving him confused and disorganised, because the account in question is at the Ibadan branch of the bank, while the withdrawal was allegedly made at the GTB, Idumota branch, Lagos.

By the time he recovered from the shock, Lawal wrote a petition to the Manager, GTBank, Dugbe, branch, Ibadan, bringing the alleged fraud to the attention of the branch.

The petition entitled, “Complaint about missing money in my account No. 401274522150/110” read inter alia. “I Lawal Abdul Adeniyi .... holder of account numbers 4012745221590 and 401274522110 respectively, got an SMS alert on my phone this morning 24–10–2008, that the sum of three million and two hundred thousand naira was withdrawn from my account number 401274522110 which I don’t have any knowledge about.

“Without any instruction from me, the sum of three million and five hundred thousand naira (N3,500,000) was transferred from my savings account, number 4012745221590 to my current account number 401274522110, the sum of three million and two hundred thousand naira was now paid to one unknown person, by name Mr. Oluwaseyi Oshinowo.”

He then prayed the GTB, Dugbe branch manager to do everything within his power to ensure that the money was returned to his account.

The bank reacted to Lawal’s petition in a letter entitled, “Re-complaint about missing money in my account (401/274522/110)” and dated 16 December, 2008.

The letter read in part, “we refer to your letter dated 24 October 2008 and our subsequent meetings on the above subject matter.

“In your letter, you stated that a withdrawal of N3,200,000 was made from your current account with your cheque leaflet number 39 by Mr. Oluwaseyi Oshinowo on 23 October 2008. You also mentioned that the cheque did not emanate from you and the withdrawal was fraudulent.

“We have reviewed the circumstances surrounding the payment of the cheque and noted that the cheque is an original Guaranty Trust Bank instrument. It was torn from the cheque booklet that you collected and have been using since December 2006.

“Our finding shows that you did not notify the bank that the cheque leaf was missing nor issued a “stop order” on the cheque.

“We equally observed that the signature on the cheque was consistent with the signature on your mandate card and the beneficiary provided a satisfactory means of identification.

“Based on the facts above, we are sorry to inform you that we are unable to accede to your request. However, as you are aware, the case has been reported to the Nigerian Police for further investigation and we shall keep you abreast of any development.”

The letter was signed by Habeeb Afolabi while another official of the bank, signed for Abolaji Yusuff, Deputy Manager, System and Control Group.

The memo was, however, silent on who authorised the transfer of N3.2 million from Lawal’s saving account to his current account for the successful execution of the fraud because before the transfer of the money, the current account had only N1,118.

When Nigerian Tribune contacted the bank, an official promised to get back to us but was yet to do so as at presstime.