This is Akinte Street; it is no doubt about the most popular street in Obawole on the account of the fact that it is the street where the private house of the Chairman of Ifako/Ijaiye Local Government Area, Apostle Toba Oke, is situated; Obawole is also one of the communities’ in the local government area.
The chairman who is in the second year of his second term as an “LG Chair” also resides there.
Popularly referred to as “My Chair” by his numerous supporters and admirers, he is said to live in the house/street and goes to his official office in Ogba from there.
The street is said to have been undergoing rehabilitation for the past one year since Oke was re-elected as the LG chair. The contract for the drainage (gutter), which was awarded to 5 Lisabi Street, Palmgrove, Lagos State, based Tolnas Nigeria Limited, has since been shabbily completed and have even started failing and would have failed completely by the time the street is eventually fixed, that is if it will ever be fixed in the tenure of Oke from the look of things.
On Wednesday, March 6 2018, the condition of the road worsened as a result of the heavy rainfall that soaked and tried to wash away the red sand (filling sand) that the contractor fixing the road dumped on the street thus making it impassable for motorists and pedestrians.
The joke now in the area is “if the street where the chair lives is as bad as this, how will other streets in the neighbourhood be?”
However, if you think the bad condition is peculiar to Akinte Street alone, then you needed to take a walk round other streets in the neigbourhood and even up to Iju and its surroundings? Then you will begin to appreciate what is called lack of dividends of democracy or bad governance at the grassroots.
A time tested political journalist who knows the many inhibition of LG chairmen across the nation, however, has this to say “this joint state/local government account cannot make them work” in his defence.”
