Member of the opposition party or parties (owning to Ogun State political peculiarity) have no qualm that the present administration has shut them up on the table of men, about talks related to infrastructural developments, chiefly roads among others.
But to residents of Sango-Agbado-Ojudu axis, this amenity has been advantageous to only those within and around the metropolitan wings of the state- Abeokuta, Sagamu and Ijebu Ode.
Time and again, I have had to answer the question, “Is this place part of Lagos State?” by people who marvel at the sorry state of the road that comes from Sango, through Ijoko, through Agbado, through Oke-Aro, through Lambe and culminate towards Ojodu Berger. To some, the Sango-Agbado-Ojudu road network seems to be ‘baddest’ road network in Ogun State. The mighty rocks that jags the way, the pits on the roads and torn drainage system can’t be described.
More worrisome is that these routes welcomes people from Lagos, Ibadan and other part of the country into The Gateway State, it definitely builds up a perception of how visitors will think of the other parts of the state; and what else can convince them.
If there was a record of the number of accidents that have occurred as transporter try to navigate through the pot holes, ditches and the tyre-spoiling stones; such record will be imprecise or underestimated. This is a complete carbuncle.
Along this Sango-Agbado-Ojudu road network are three mighty impediments in the form of abandoned bridges leaving the Ijoko, Agbado and Lambe spot in a colourful mess rather than what it was meant for. At the start of this project, since 2011 thereabout, Governor Ibikunle Amosun’s first tenure; the hopes of the people were heightened and they took for a compensation the destruction of their precious generational houses, rented shops and market believing an end had come to the bad roads.
These days, very few people take the risk of sacrificing the shafts, shock absorbers, tyres and engines of their vehicles by plying the road especially during rainy seasons where few cars that comes through the series of pools do so coughing and sweating. Many who are landlords in Ogun State have been forced to become humble tenants in humiliating cribs in Lagos- just to keep their jobs and their taxes goes to Lagos, completely. The people wail daily!
What the residents of this road network can make of the praises they once sang for the governor and the paparazzi of the media is that, “we have been abandoned by the State government!” Have they really been? Is it wrong not to reside in the municipal areas? Could it be that the Ogun State government has deliberately left this people to their problems because most of them work in Lagos State and pay their taxes there? Where on earth are those we voted for from this constituency?
Whatever the reasons are, it’s nothing when compared to the trust the people in this part of the state had placed on the government, it’s not compared to the verbal promises the Ogun State governor made to the people months ago. It is nothing, absolutely!
The senator, the Ifo local government chairman and the members representing these consistencies have questions to answer. The people need to be confident of what their votes account for before they begin to think their lamentations are vain and no one seems to hear them, left alone listen, respond and act.
In view of the economic crises and all other woes befalling the people and also ‘affecting’ the government, one cannot be sure of the possibility of this government fixing the road and making it glorifying (this doesn’t rule out that this is the people’s only option), but the truth is that whichever government comes to the aid of the hundreds of thousands of people who reside or work along the Ijoko-Ojudu road will be worshiped as gods- a god that has redeemed them of a monster that kept butchering their aspirations and limiting them over the last decade.
~Seyifunmi ADEBOTE, Guest Writer
Adeboteseyi@gmail.com
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