An Open Letter to Governor Dapo Abiodun By Olanrewaju R. Adebayo Adebayo
YOUR EXCELLENCY, PRINCE DAPO ABIODUN…..
This is an open letter born not of partisan venom but of patriotic urgency. I write to you as a concerned citizen and chronicler of Ogun State’s promise and potential.
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1. Roads in Ruin: Your People’s Daily Hazard
Across Ogun State, arteries of commerce and community have become chasms of risk. From the Abeokuta core to remote border towns, drivers, traders, pregnant women, students, everyone faces the same silent trap: roads that twist into danger zones instead of conduits of progress. Thirty-odd months of rain, cargo trucks, commuters, and still, we stare at tarmac turning back into mud. This is not legacy; it is neglect.
2. Your Media Team: Propaganda in Place of Performance
While potholes wait to be filled, your data boys and media aides wage war in WhatsApp groups and social platforms, spinning narratives, launching tribal taunts, hurling insults at citizens who speak truth. Their online tantrums are not supporting governance; they are hallucinations of it. Governors aren’t served by armies of trolls; they’re served by deliverers of results.
Your image bleeds when these men mock lives being crushed by bad roads. Every abusive comment, every tribal clap-back, every shameful dismissal of citizen pain is a drip in the dignity of your office. Governance does not grow from hashtags, it blooms in highway ribbons.
3. The Irony of Resources vs. Reality
You have had revenue, allocations, influence, yet the roads say otherwise. What good is a press release about “1,200 km fixed” when people still queue at wrecked junctions, risk lives crossing cracked surfaces and pay for vehicle repairs caused by state neglect? Performance is measured in asphalt and action, not airtime and announcements.
4. The Call to Lead: Real, Raw, Immediate
Here’s what you must do, Governor:
Order an immediate audit of all state roads; publish status, cost, completion targets.
Launch a 500-km emergency reconstruction plan within the next 6 months, prioritising industrial corridors, border towns and commuter tracks.
Disband or restructure any media unit that treats public suffering as opposition fodder. Replace spin with substance; trolls with traffic engineers.
Establish community oversight committees with real power and budgets, let citizens monitor progress, not just be pounded with press releases.
5. Why This Matters
Your legacy is not built in studios or spin rooms; it is laid in concrete, asphalt and the rhythm of commerce moving again. While your aides fight online shadows, the real war is fought on the road to Alagbole, in the rain-soaked lane to Ota, and in the trembling suspension of an 18-tonne truck stuck in potholes.
If you continue to allow your media guys to distract from the destruction, if you let slogans mask scars of salt-water and tar, you risk more than reputation, you risk an irreversible collapse of trust.
6. The Final Word
You hold the pen, Your Excellency. Draft a new chapter: one where roads connect lives, not break them. Where media teams amplify success, not suppress suffering. Where Ogun State becomes the Gateway it was meant to be, not the graveyard of good intentions.
For the people are watching. And every cracked road is a question unanswered.
CREDIT: Yours in urgent hope,
Olanrewaju R. Adebayo,
Concerned Citizen & Chronicler, Abeokuta.
