Singapore, Dubai, where most structures are owned by Nigerians

It is common knowledge that Nigerians are highly enterprising. What may not be generally known, however, is that most of the beautiful buildings on parade in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Singapore, are owned by Nigerians. KUNLE AWOSIYAN reports.

Dubai

It may sound unbelievable but it is true that some of the beautiful buildings in Dubai and Singapore are owned by Nigerians.

This was revealed by a team of Lagos State officials who recently returned from the Middle East after a two- week manpower development training in the cities.

Speaking to the Nigerian Tribune at the arrival hall of the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos on Thursday, the General Manager, Lagos State Infrastructure Maintenance and Regulatory Agency, (LASIMRA), Mr. Joe Igbokwe, said he was sad to learn that some of the edifices in the cities were owned by Nigerians.

“Our leaders have lost tracks and have taken our money to develop foreign lands, leaving Nigeria to decay everyday,” he said.

As he put it, “Singapore and Dubai, these are people we were better than about 30 years ago. Singapore was able to transform from a third world country to a first world country through dint of hard work and the commitment of the leadership.”

“We went there to see how they did it. Dubai and Singapore are now the destinations of the world and the pride of the Middle East. How come the people of Dubai were able to transform a desert to what it is today? That is what we went there to study, we are loaded and are ready to replicate this in Lagos,” Igbokwe added.

According to him, when compared with Singapore and Dubai, the roads in Lagos and Nigeria as a whole are nothing to write home about, adding “we are very far behind. There are massive constructions everywhere in Dubai; the power there is non-stop. If they take light in Dubai, they may not be able to work because of the heat.”

He stated that Nigeria could not progress unless it is able to solve the problems in the energy sector, adding, “We need power and roads to be able to move. Everywhere in Dubai is air conditioned; even shops for ordinary people are air conditioned. They invest so much in the power sector because that place is hot.”


Singapore

“We have not got there probably because we don’t have that kind of planning and we are not challenged like Singapore. Nothing has challenged us in Nigeria, even the civil war; we learnt nothing from it, which is why we remain like this. I don’t know whether to cry or shed tears. We can replicate what is happening in Dubai and Singapore in Nigeria,” Igbokwe stated.

Corroborating Igbokwe, the Chairman, Lagos State House Committee on Education, Mr. Alawiye King said that Singapore had succeeded because it had invested massively in education.

According to him: “The two weeks I spent in the cities showed how its government had been able to invest so much in human capital and that had transformed into what they are getting today. We have seen massive and aggressive infrastructural renewal in Dubai, we went there to see how they did it in such a short period of time,” he said, adding that he would soon sponsor two bills on the floor of the House on how to move education forward in the state.”


The Palm Jumeirah, Dubai's man-made isles, is a 30 square-km island group that took five years to raise from millions of tons of Persian Gulf sand and quarried rock.

To the Secretary, State Consultancy Board, Mr. Lateef Lawal, Singapore and Dubai had stable political system, which had aided their development, saying, “they invested so much in human development and they made sure that they go into real development. The shortest building in Dubai is 25 or 30-storey and they are even going higher.”

He noted that Singapore operated direct investment which it had transformed into heavy development, calling on the Federal Government to learn from the idea. “We should start and concentrate on massive infrastructural renewal. In the area of power, we should not run away from it, we have to go back to our original master plan.

“Federal Government should as a matter of urgency come to the rescue of Lagos State, because there is the need for it to put in place massive investment in the state as the commercial hub of the country,” he said.

The officials were drawn from the Ministries of Physical Planning and Urban Development, Environment, among others while some others were also drawn from government agencies, such as the Lagos State Infrastructural Maintenance and Regulatory Agency (LASIMRA), State Consultancy Board and the Lagos State House of Assembly.

Posted: at 6-08-2009 07:44 AM (14 years ago) | Hero

Corruption is our bane. Dishonest politicians over inflate all contracts so much so that the amount budgeted for a 30KM road would have conviniently build 150KM of such roads of better quality in other countries of the world.
Every single official business is enmeshed in Corruption. There is Corruption in high and low places. Solve the problem of Corruption and 85% of our problems would have been solved.

Posted: at 28-09-2012 09:20 PM (11 years ago) | Upcoming