If there’s anything Lagos council administrations excel at, it is building single-use/ disposable roads or those that don’t last much longer than lettuces.
Admittedly, these claims are grotesquely exaggerated, but why not when council chairmen drunkenly exaggerate their service delivery credentials?
Where I live (Ifako-Ijaiye Local Government Area), the Usman Akanbi Hamzat-led council administration is in snooze mode as far as road maintenance or building is concerned. I think it’s actually more appropriate to say it is lying in state like that of Toba Oke, his predecessor.
Council roads are falling apart and provoke listless reaction from the government, which initially made out as though it had more vim than the one it succeeded. Both are great at patching no more than two or three tiny spots on a road over a period of like three months, leaving the gaping ones.
The immediate past Chairman started the construction of the less than a kilometre road on which he lives, but failed to complete it in three years. His successor restarted work on the road, got flimsy asphalt laid halfway and has left it. At least the asphalt has gone beyond his predecessor’s “door mouth”, so it’s esprit de corps. Bola Oyewo Street, the road leading to it and built by the former chap’s government, is beginning to look like diggers were taken to it by deranged people.
The situation is similar in many places I visit in Lagos and I suspect what we call council administrations around the country are largely fictional. The quality of roads built by council these days is, in comparison to what we got as recently as the late 90s and early noughties, is worse than depressing. We’re going backwards and at a high velocity.
