By KIKELOMO IWAJOMO
The immediate past governor of Lagos State, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, SAN drew attention all over the world earlier today when he was on the podium for the ministerial screening in the Senate. For hours, he trended on ‘worldwide’ Twitter! Fashola has many things going for him. For the Senior Advocate of Nigeria(SAN), when he isn’t in a high-level policy meeting, he takes to his library. Fashola is a voracious reader.
Those close to Fashola know him as a bookworm. Shortly after he handed over to Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, three books chronicling his achievements as governor of Lagos State between 2007 and 2015 were launched: ‘The Great Leap’, a book written by Mr. Hakeem Bello, who served as Special Adviser on Media to Fashola and two others co-authored by Dapo Adeniyi. The other two are: ‘In Bold Prints: Thoughts of Babatunde Fashola’ and ‘Lagos Blow Down: West Africa’s First Controlled Demolition’.
Here’s a small but revealing side of the famous bureaucrat: the kind of books Fashola likes to read. Along with the Quran(Holy Book of Islam), personal development and law titles, autobiographies, and biographies, Fashola also reads economic theory for fun. On his bedside table are books by development economists who see potential in poverty, people like the late C.K. Prahalad of the University of Michigan or Hernando de Soto of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD) in Lima.
