Fashola, who previously served as Tinubu's chief of staff, told me that when the tax collection efforts began, in 1999, the city was officially taking in a paltry $4 million a month. "Today, we are doing 15-16 billion naira ($101 million), and the incredible thing is that haven't raised taxes. We are still a long way off, though, because we estimate modestly that 8 million people are employed here, and only 3 million are in our tax net."

In a region full of states rendered unaccountable to their citizens by the so-called resource curse, which allows elites -- in Nigeria, the so-called top million -- to live off of their production of raw materials, this stands out as a surprisingly radical idea.

To wit, the city's approach to politics and governance are being emulated in other states, especially elsewhere in the country's south, and as dependence on the center and on oil revenue steadily weakens, many now say, so inevitably will the rational for Nigeria as we know it.

The first of two lengthy conversations I had with Fashola, came at end of a news conference at his sprawling state government complex. When the assembled local press began to break up and his aides introduced me, the governor asked me what he could do for me, to which I requested that he sit down for an interview.

Fashola's aides had previously described him to me as restless, impatient and endlessly demanding. "He looks around us constantly and feels this is not good enough," one of them had told me. "We have the resources, we have the materials, we have the people, and our lives could be much better."

Now they looked on aghast when he responded by immediately inviting me into his office and speaking in impassioned, rapid-fire fashion about his ambitions for the city.

These included building a series of new satellite towns around central Lagos in order to accommodate its mushrooming population. He spoke about the need to revive the civil service by attracting talented people from the private sector. He spoke about ongoing efforts to improve education by involving parents more in their children's schooling.

"One of the new reforms we have initiated is that parents must attend a minimum 90 percent of the parents-teachers association meetings for their kids to move on to the next class," he said, adding that, "if the parents take school seriously, the children will naturally do so."

Fashola spoke of being inspired by visits to other cities that have emerged rapidly in other underdeveloped parts of the world, beginning with Singapore. "I met with Lee Kwan Yew, and the people who worked with him. I knew from what they did that we could do it too, and I came back very angry. I went to Dubai on the same trip, and what they are doing there is absolutely audacious. It put rockets in my shoes."

Early one morning, I set out in another driving rain to the governor's official residence, from which I would follow Fashola's motorcade for an inspection tour of new housing projects being built by the Lagos state government.