Lambe, Ajunwon, Akute, Matogun, Adiyan Agbado et all, are all suburbs in Ifo Local Government Area of Ogun State.
Interestingly, they have many challenges like lack of pipe borne water (despite the fact that Adiyan, like Iju, in Lagos State, houses a water project that incidentally supplies portable water to parts of Lagos State. That is another topic for another day), electricity is another one (though, the epileptic supply of the service to the area is not peculiar to it, as it is a national phenomenon), they all have poor or nonexistence motorable roads.
Anywhere one turn in these areas, one is confronted by bad roads. When it rains, residents practically swim through the ponds called roads, to go to their places of work or schools and when it shines, you dare not dress in white attire, otherwise, you turn to deep brown chocolate. Such is the fate of the teeming population that inhabits the area but most of whom eke out a living in Lagos State and, which available records from Lagos State shows, pay as much as N500 million in tax to Ogun State government; that is from those who work with Lagos State government not to talk of those in the informal sector if they are encouraged to pay their taxes through the provision of essential amenities of life.
While one can safely say that there is no or near absence of government presence there, from local, state and federal, except the grandiose 10-lane road with five bridges, which the present governor of the state, Ibikunle Amosun, initiated, the communities, one can safely say, is a forgotten area.
However, while it seems that the area will remain like that for a while, because, one does not need a soothsayer, to predict that the 10-lane project, which had rendered many homeless because of the many buildings it consumed on the orders of Governor Ibikunle Amosun, will not be completed this year, not even next year, some of the residents of the area are not of help to themselves.
Rather than concern themselves with how succour can come their way inform of the provision of important amenities or infrastructure such as road, the vast majority are preoccupied with the shenanigans playing out between the governor of the state with the leadership of his party, particularly the national working committee of the party. They are fixated about which party wins 2019 elections – the All Progressives Congress (APC) or the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Buhari or Atiku. That is what currently occupy the minds of majority of them. That is what you see them in street corners chattering about. None is talking about the state of roads in the vicinity, none is talking about the absence of state funded hospital or primary and secondary schools. No one is concerned about that.
They are not bothered about how to bring the over 50 candidates justling to succeed Amosun to the area to see the state of the communities’ roads and tell them what plans he/she has in the pipeline to make them motorable. They are more concerned about the feud between Akinlade and Dapo Abiodun who wins the election while the market and even the artistic value of their buildings keep depreciating before their very eyes due to lack of access roads to the towns.
Until the residents of the communities take themselves seriously; until they begin to aggressively demand for their rights, until they show to the politicians that they are no second class citizens of Ogun State and until they let the politicians know that the areas have huge internally generated revenue (IGR) potential, that it is a goldmine waiting to be tapped, government will never take them seriously.
