On May 29 2019, Prince Dapo Abiodun the newly elected governor of Ogun State will mount the podium to take his oath of office.
On that day, his processor, Governor Ibikunle Amosun, will formally handover to him in a ceremony to be witnessed by residents of the state. Amosun, on his part, though, he has no option, had promised to handover to him. So, on that day the good people of the state are sure of a peaceful transition not a repeat of what happened when President Muhammadu Buhari came for electioneering campaign in the state last year.
While Dapo Abiodun continues in prayer to God to give him the wisdom to govern the state without fear or favour, the people of the state will be glued to their TV sets while those who will find their way to the venue of the swearing-in ceremony will fix their gaze on him, thinking of where he is likely to start with his work of providing the people with the benefit of democracy. While the debate goes on in their minds, majority will suggest that his task of revamping the state should start from border towns. Boundary towns like Lambe, Akute, Mowe, Magboro, Agbara and so on, all of which are regarded as the golden towns that are capable of laying the golden eggs for the state in terms of Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), if well developed and citizens provided with essential amenities that make life worth living.
Amenities like roads, hospitals, schools and security. Nothing more; because over the years, successive civilian governments of the state had neglected the towns. All infrastructures in the towns, if there is any at all, have rot away.
Of particular interest to this writer is the state of roads in Lambe and Akute. In fact one will not be entirely wrong if one says that the two border towns with its teeming population, which is a source of IGR for the state, have no road(s). Either way you approach the two towns – whether from Iju/Giwa axis or from Ojodu/Alagbole, the story is the same. Bad and impassable roads.
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Dapo Abiodun needs to adorn his thinking cap and think very fast as to where and how he will get the funding to compete the ambitious initial 10-lane-road that that his precedeessor, Ibikunle Amosun has scaled down to six lane; the road runs from … To Berger Bus Stop in Lagos State. That apart, the internal roads in these aforementioned towns are not anything to cheer about.
When the 10-lane-road initially started, it was estimated to cost the state government a staggering $52 million dollars.
Even when it was scaled down, the cost did not because of inflation, which pushed it up to…
The new governor-elect needs to do something and do it urgently to let the residents of these towns, especially Lambe/Akute, know that they are part and parcel of the state. He needs to do it to stem the rural urban drift of residents of the area to adjoining Lagos towns like Iju. He needs to do it to assure the people that their area is not only remembered during electioneering campaigns or good only for the hoisting of campaign billboards, posters. He needs to stop the current practice where people are selling off their landed properties in the area and relocate to Lagos to avoid the stress on their health occasioned by the bad roads, which is always in its worse state during the wet season.
Some of the residents of the area Newdawn spoke to and who does want their pictures in print blamed Governor Amosun and ex-governor Gbenga Daniel for the state of the roads.
“Even if Gbenga Daniel and Amosun were doing a kilometre per month for the 16 years they both spent as governors, the road would have been done,” a bus driver, Alhaji Kehinde Kareem, said in pidgin English.
Another resident who gave his name as Columbus Okoye a motor spare parts seller said, “I pity these bus drivers. They spend a lot on their vehicles because of this road. And I blame government for it. If it was just four lane roads, this project would have been completed since.”
” There was practically no need for the 10 or six-lane-road in this area. Is it that busy? If it was conceived as a four-lane road, it would have long been completed and forgotten. But no, Amosun was interested in a road that is as long and wide like his skyscraper cap. Now he is stuck and we are in a big shit hole.”
According to another resident who described herself simply as a writer but bluntly refused her name and picture in print: “When my husband and I moved into this place exactly nine years ago with our children, the roads were relatively nice. There were not this bad. Then it takes less than 10 minutes to drive from Iju to Aro Lambo Bus Stop when the roads are free of traffic jams but not anymore. As more and more people began to move in here, the roads began to experience wear and tear and our government in this state turned a blind eye. That was when it would have stepped in. Designate the place as a new town and begin to develop it. I had expected that these axis, Lambe and Akute would have been developed the way Babatunde Fashola developed Lekki,” she said. “Nowadays, it takes me close to two hours to travel from my house to Iju, a distance of less down 20 kilometres. I just pray and hope that the new governor-elect, will look our way,” she said.
The above narrative is the present state of the road, which has five bridges and, which many have said “is a needless design,” at least for now, because the road runs across only two rivers in Alagbole and Giwa areas.
They argued that with the lean finance available to the state and the not too heavy traffic in the area in question, the state would have make do with just four lane roads with plan for future expansion.
