Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, said on Wednesday that the State is planning to establish a Sovereign Investment Fund for strategic investments into the future.
Governor Sanwo-Olu spoke during a courtesy visit by the Executive Management of the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA), led by its Managing Director/CEO, Aminu Umar-Sadiq, at Lagos House, Marina.
The Governor charged the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority to consider investing in the Lekki Airport, Rail, Film City and Food Logistics hub projects of the Lagos State Government.
He said: “We, as a subnational, are planning to set up Sovereign Investment Fund and it is not out of place because we also realised that the Sovereign Fund is critical. It is critical because you can starve yourself a little bit to provide for the future by setting something aside for the future. I think it is always a prudent thing to do. It is not out of place for subnationals to have funds working for today and for the future.
“I am aware you (NSIA) have a massive oncology center in LUTH (Lagos University Teaching Hospital). We believe Lagos actually requires about four or five of such facilities across the state. So, we as a government are planning to support another investor to set up another one so that we can have a way to meet the growing needs of our citizens to reverse medical tourism.
“In Lagos, we pride ourselves on being able to do more if we can get the resources to work with. We have an airport project that we have conceived and are pushing to get financial closure. You can take on the project.
“We also have rail projects (Blue and Red lines) that we have done. There are other rail projects that we’ve designed that will help improve public transportation in Lagos.
“We have Film City in Lagos, which is a massive entertainment city that we are planning to build. It is the future of the creative industry. These are investments we have in Lagos you might look at.”
Speaking earlier, Umar-Sadiq said NSIA is an institution established by law to manage funds on behalf of future generations of Nigerians. He disclosed that the fund last year made about N1.6 trillion in total comprehensive income and N200 billion in terms of core earnings.
He said: “Lagos continues to be the core jurisdiction for a lot of our infrastructural activities. We have a lot of investments and infrastructural development in the areas of health, agriculture, and technology in Lagos State.
“NSIA will continue to ensure that we operationalise ourselves to be essentially the asset manager of choice for both the federal and state governments in Nigeria.
“We will continue to put ourselves forward for use by both state and federal government actors, as the case may be. We can leverage for the benefit of the Center of Excellence.”
