In this interview granted Arise Television, Lagos State deputy Governor Kadri Obafemi Hamzat speaks on the recent nationwide youth protest, legacy projects of the Sanwo-Olu Administration and ethnicism, among other key issues: Some excerpts: How did the Lagos State Government manage the protest to prevent escalation of violence as seen in Kano, Kaduna, and other parts of the North? Then, you must have heard of the one-month ultimatum given Igbos to leave Lagos. The Lagos State Government has denounced it, but is the government taking other steps to ensure that the state does not become a boiling point for ethnic bigotry? The first thing for us is engagement. As a people, we must learn from our experiences.
We were all alive when the #End SARS happened, and we saw the aftermath. Various infrastructure were destroyed, and we said never again. With that in mind, we went to our people, explaining the various initiatives we are embarking on and how they can be destroyed.
I recall meeting some students, and I said to them, ‘You are all engineering students’. One of the buildings that was destroyed was the Public Works building. At the time, we brought in the biggest machine in this part of the world that can lay about a thousand interlocking blocks in an hour.
But that multimillion-dollar machine was destroyed. This is where we train pupil-engineers, because when you graduate from engineering classes, you are all taught about mixtures of concrete, ratios, and other things. Howe.