Shoot out at high noon

Imagine the scene.  The street is unnaturally quiet.  All you can hear is the sound of the wind and doors slamming in the distance.  Brushwood blows along the dusty street and the clock on the church tower strikes mid-day.  From one end of the road, a solitary figure emerges.  Dressed in black you can’t see his face.  His spurs jangle as he strides purposefully into town.  His hands are by his pistols.  Down the other end, movement. Another figure, tall and gaunt.  A white Stetson shades his eyes but you can see intent even from this distance. Faces peer from windows and disappear again as the combatants face each other menacingly.  The tension is unbearable.

Suddenly, a flash. A bang.  One man drops to his knees.  An expression of surprise as he falls on his face.  For a moment all is silent. Suddenly doors open.  People rush out and surround the man standing.  They call his name and lift him to their shoulders.  When they reach the Town Hall the old Mayor comes out.  He pins the badge on the chest of the victor. Dodge City has a new Sheriff.

So, what kind of sheriff will he be?  Bad Sheriffs surround themselves with hard, mean men.  They wear badges from the law but are a law unto themselves.  As they walk the sidewalk, the old ladies cross over to avoid them. In the saloon, the pianist stops playing for a moment and the men at the bar look down into their glasses to avoid eye contact.  This Sheriff makes friends with the big landowners outside of town.  With the ‘law’ on their side they take land and farms from small sharecroppers who have no protection.  Their cattle trample through the squatters’ camp but no one dares to complain.  The new Sheriff sits in the Jail House with his boots on the table giving orders.  Outside in the sun the supplicants wait, ready to pay for permission to build a new store or erect a new Church.  He doesn’t like the few Red Indians from the nearby village and they are sent back or locked up.  Dodge City becomes a sad town, unless you are a friend to the sheriff.

What Dodge City residents hope for is a Good Sherriff, who personally cares for his constituents. Who walks down the street greeting people and doffing his hat politely to the old ladies.  Who pops into the Church and checks how the fundraising bazaar for the orphanage is getting on.  The new schoolhouse that was started by the previous Sherriff was taking sometime but at last good progress is being made. The big landowners respect him because he is firm and fair.  True, they are not able to ride roughshod over the small holders and squatters but he maintains the rule of law and makes sure cattle rustlers are kept at bay.  He meets the Chief of the Red Indian village down by the lake and now they come into town and trade peacefully.  Because Dodge City is now a good place to bring up kids more settlers are moving in and the Rail Road has agreed to build a spur and a station.  The grocery store has re-opened and old mama Smith’s eatery house is always full.  Dodge City is a growing City economically and socially.

The analogy, of course, is a bit of fun and the comparison not taken too literally. However, in the past, there have been times when I have felt Lagos was a bit like the Wild, Wild West. To believe some of the aggressive and over-the-top rhetoric coming from the candidates – or more accurately from their ‘supporters’ – you might have felt we were in for a shoot out rather than an election.  Instead, at Federal and State level (in Lagos anyway) statesmanship prevailed.  Here, in our own “Dodge city”, Jimi Agbaje always had a tough fight on his hands for reasons that have been well documented.  Once APC had triumphed at the national level, it was going to be even more difficult.  Fortunately, Jimi didn’t have to ‘bite the dust’ but rather was able to respectfully congratulate his opponent in the knowledge his campaign had been a strong one.

I have a soft spot for Jimi, having met him on a few occasions and found him to be humble and ready to listen.  I was particularly interested in the prominence his well-constructed manifesto gave to environmental issues. I thought he was clearly uncomfortable with personalising the election despite many in both caucuses pushing it that way and felt he was intuitively ready to recognise previous achievements while believing he could make more.

I do not know Akinwunmi Ambode and have never met him but my hopes, like so many Lagosians, are high.  He has one immediate advantage he can utilise for all our benefits.  It would set his tenure up positively should he obtain early engagement from our new Federal Government to undertake their responsibilities to Lagos seriously for the first time in almost a generation.

The list is long and includes many quick wins such as fixing the traffic in and around Apapa ports, tackling NPA’s inefficiencies, repairing Lagos’ Federal roads and bridges, bringing our key ‘point of entry’, MMA, to something like international standards (car park, multiple checkpoints, woeful infrastructure, aviation safety etc.) and so on.  The opportunity is open to a governor with energy and vision.  So, a true western shoot-out it may not have been but ‘Dodge City’ has a new Sherriff.  Which one will he turn out to be?