Bad roads: Ogun communities cry out, resort to self-help
Residents of some communities in Ogun State who are suffering from bad roads have resorted to self-help as temporary measures.
PUNCH Metro gathered that residents had been contributing money to carry out temporary repair works on the bad roads while they still expect the government to come to their aid.
One of such communities is the Adesan-Olu community in the Obafemi Owode Local Government Area of the state.
A resident, Mr Moshood Morenigbade, told PUNCH Metro on Wednesday that residents had been maintaining the main road linking the community to others for over 20 years.
He said the road had never been tarred or graded by the government.
Morenigbade who moved into the community in 2000 said the “residents have been paying levies for palliatives used in maintaining the road.”
Speaking with PUNCH Metro, Baale of the community, Tajudeen Adesan-Olu, also said successive state governments had not done anything on the road.
Another resident, Alhaji Bamidele Nasiru, said, “The road is a pain in the neck and we the community leaders have been doing palliatives since 2005 through the help of the CDC.
“We have made several efforts to reach the local and state governments for assistance, but nothing has been done.”
Also, members of Agbena, Agejo, Alagada and Oba communities in the same local government area appealed to the state government to save their businesses from crumbling due to the bad state of their roads.
The residents who spoke with our correspondents on Wednesday lamented that the road had suffered abandonment for over 10 years, thereby subjecting them to hardship.
When PUNCH Metro visited the communities on Wednesday, it was observed that the road which connects the communities to the Abeokuta-Sagamu Expressway was in a bad state.
A trader in the Agbena community simply identified as Yetunde said that the bad state of the road had crumbled business activities in the area because people were not migrating to the community in a way that could have helped the socioeconomic development of the community.
Another trader in the Agejo community who spoke on condition of anonymity, described the condition of the road as “terribly bad,” saying it had made the cost of transporting their wares from the major towns unbearable.
A commercial motorcyclist, Abayomi Oluwabiyi, said the bad road had affected his trade because it was always stressful transporting passengers to their destinations.
“This bad road links many parts of the state. This place hosts Oba Custodial Centre and it also links to Kobape. The government should consider all these and fix the road,” he said.
Contacted, the Special Adviser to the Governor on Works and Infrastructure, Mr Ade Akinsanya, said, “We are trying to touch as many roads as possible. I can’t tell you we are going to work on it tomorrow. We are working with a limited budget right now and cannot do everything at the same time.” Punch
