Sanwo-Olu unveils plan to fully reopen Lagos economy

Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State has said he is considering full re-opening of the critical sectors of the economy after assessing the readiness of businesses to re-open.

The governor stated this on Sunday after the State’s Security Council meeting, held at the State House, Marina.

He said that in the coming days, the state government would be rolling out “Register-to-Open” initiative as part of the plans that would enable it to assess the level of readiness of the players in the identified sectors for supervised operations.

The governor said that the officials from the Lagos State Safety Commission (LSSC) and Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency (LASEPA) would be visiting restaurants, companies, religious houses to assess their level of readiness.

He said that with the size of the state’s economy and numbers of businesses that are operating in Lagos, the government could not afford to keep people and businesses on lockdown permanently.

“We are at a level where we are reviewing the other arms of the economy.

“In the coming days, we will be starting what we call Register-to-Open, which means all players in the restaurant business, event centres, entertainment, malls and cinemas will go through a form of re-registration and space management.

“There is a regulation that will be introduced to supervise this move.

“We will be coming to their facilities to assess their level of readiness for a future opening.

“I don’t know when that opening will happen in the weeks ahead, but we want these businesses to begin to tune themselves to the reality of COVID-19 with respect to how their workspaces need to look like.

“For us, it is not to say they should re-open fully tomorrow or any time; there has been a process guiding the re-opening.

“We will be mandating LASEPA and Safety Commission to begin the enumeration process and the agencies will be communicating with all relevant businesses and houses in the days ahead,” the governor said.

He, however, cautioned that the plan to reopen the economy “should not be misinterpreted as a licence for full opening; it is certainly not’’.

“We are reviewing and considering how the phased unlocking will happen.

“If we see the huge level of compliance, then it can happen in the next two to three weeks.

“If not, it could take a month or two months.

“It is until we are sure all of these players are ready to conform to our guidelines,” Sanwo-Olu said.

Meanwhile, the governor hinted that all the 10 staff of the Government House, who tested positive for coronavirus disease, had fully recovered and returned to their beats.