The governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, has said that his government will collaborate with Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) as well as the entire private sector, if elected into power.
At the official unveiling of his programmes for the state for the March 2 governorship election, held in Ikeja, Lagos, recently, Sanwo-Olu made this disclosure, while stressing the need to empower SMEs and players in the private sector.
Unveiling what he christened “Five Pillars” on which he intends building development, Sanwo-Olu harped on the need to partner with the private sector for empowerment which would in turn employ the teeming population of employed Lagosians, since the challenge of unemployment cannot be holistically tackled, even if the workforce is doubled.
“Femi (his running mate) and I are here to share our thoughts on the five pillars for development in our government. These are things we didn’t just sit in our bedrooms to draft out. They were cleverly thought out and based on critical research.
“The engine of growth for any government is the private sector and SMEs. The actual people we need to engage to galvanise development in the economy is the private sector. The private sector controls over 80 percent of the state’s GDP.
“For you to contribute to a continuous foreign direct investment, you must be safe. Once you provide maximum security for the private sector, the economy will grow and SMEs will benefit,” he said.
Lending his voice to the earlier assertions, the running mate of Sanwo-Olu, Obafemi Hamzat, disclosed that all his team is doing now and will do, if elected into power, has been encapsulated in a new online application.
“This is the app that captures all the activities of the party in the state. Lagosians can now measure our activities and performances. As at the last time I checked, it was the number one trending app on Google Play Store,” said Hamzat.