Ogun’s messy infrastructure

With the decrepit state of infrastructure and accompanying poverty in most states across the country, one wonders what their governors are doing with the increasingly bogus monthly allocations they receive under the current administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR.

Equally disturbing is whether members of the executive councils of such states tell their governors the empirical truth at such once-a-week meetings the facts about the genuine well-being of their jurisdictions. This is without discounting the fact that most governors are despots in democratic garb, merely deploying their executive councils as mere rubber stamps to drive their selfish policies/projects.

The legislatures of states where infrastructural neglect are rampant may have been decapitated by politics of compromise that is antithetical to the discharge of their oversight responsibilities. Yet, for the ongoing executive rascality and greed that is undeservingly giving the federal government a bad name, a legislature imbued with audacious instinct is very necessary to whip a derelict executive arm of government to order.

All efforts must now be deployed to ensure that currently pocketed legislatures should be alive to their responsibilities. This is more important because executive councils’ members, largely appointed by governors, operate at such governors’ mercy. Herein lies the dilemma against real development at this President Bola Tinubu’s era of surplus allocations to states with no meaningful development to show for it in the lives of states’ inhabitants.

Now that President Tinubu, Senate President Godswill Akpabio and the national chairman of All Progressives Congress (APC), Professor Nentawe Yilwatda, have all recently enjoined Nigerians to demand transparency and accountability in the spendings of huge federal allocations from their governors and local councils’ chairmen, the need for this piece becomes necessary.

And the klieg-light this week is being beamed on the poor condition of especially roads infrastructure in Ogun state. The condemnable state of roads in the ‘Gateway State’ to the nation is unexplainable in view of the nonchalant and epileptic approach of Governor Dapo Abiodun to the general infrastructural development of the state he was elected to govern.

Governor Abiodun has unexpectedly been a big disappointment in governance issues. He’s perhaps the first billionaire from the business world to govern Ogun State, but his governance reflexes are not something that the Dangotes and Otedolas of this world should be proud of. This is because the Ogun State governor belongs to their nouveau riche class. And when the names of purportedly wealthy Nigerians in business are to be compiled, Abiodun’s name will prominently feature. Thanks to his reported investments in the oil and gas and real estate sectors. The man has undeniably done well in life for himself but not for Ogun state.

Having created a niche for himself in the business world, he, like many others like him, took a detour into politics, and this seems to have paid off for him. Even though he’s far from becoming a remarkable politician, he has deployed his wealth to corner a position for himself in the money-infested politics of this country where getting an elective office depends not on what you have upstairs but largely in how much war-chest you possess or you can, by proxy, put on the table.

Today, Abiodun is not just the governor of Ogun State but also a second term helmsman that looks forward to completing his two terms of eight years in 2027 with discerning eyes on the senatorial seat of Ogun East as his post governorship retirement benefit.

Abiodun served a first term with insignificant momentum and he’s now in his lackluster second term cum over six years in office. It won’t be unfair to ask governor Abiodun whether he has acquitted himself well in office. This is particularly so with the recurring social media complaints by Ogun State inhabitants regarding mostly road infrastructure neglect. There’s need to draw attention to his unpardonable dereliction of duty; and to let him know that he should pay less attention to politicking and provide good outliving legacy in his remaining less than two years in office.

The people’s cries over the empirically debilitating state of infrastructural problems that the state has come to be notoriously known for in barely over six years of Abiodun’s docile misrule is palpable. It remains to be seen how the governor is going to convince his people, going forward, that he truly possesses the capacity and sincerity of purpose to take the state out of its official-inflicted infrastructural nightmare.

In over six years of Abiodun’s governance of the rock-city state, nothing points in the direction of a man of visionary mission being on the saddle at Oke-Mosan. Yours sincerely, for instance, has witnessed the pathetic state of road infrastructure, especially in the state capital of Abeokuta. This clearly shows the governor as being only rich but devoid of requisite governance or public service skills. His supposed private sector success has not in any way positively impacted Ogun state.

Many bystanders argue that a governor who knows his onions should have been strategic in sustaining infrastructural balancing in the state. Such a governor needs to prioritize projects sitting across the three senatorial districts of Ogun Central; Ogun East and Ogun West.

A proviso here is that doing this should not be at the detriment of Ogun Central that doubles as the state capital and, as such, should benefit more from developmental initiatives of any governor in the state. Ogun Central serves as the melting point of people of diverse tribes, ethnicities, and even nationalities. For these reasons and more, the need for the governor’s attention for the area is, however, not a favour but a necessity.

The decrepit state of roads in the state capital underscores the governor’s lack of understanding of the hardships daily encountered by investors, commuters, and vehicles’ owners in the state. This clearly amplifies his contempt for the feelings of inhabitants and investors in the state.

Dapo Abiodun’s special consultant on Islamic affairs and Wakeel of Muslims in Ogun, Edo and Delta states, Alhaji Iskeel Lawal, who goes by the sobriquet ‘Sugar’ captures Abiodun’s misplacement of priority and shoddy approach to governance when at a recent social media-gone-viral public function where he beckoned on the governor he’s serving: “Mr Governor, please if people of Iperu-Remo fly in aero planes, kindly provide good roads in Abeokuta for our people to also drive their vehicles.” No better satirical observation can better capture Abiodun’s ineptitude than this.

The governor’s lame excuse that some of the roads are owned by the federal government is reactionary. Are the people plying the roads owned by the federal government? Again, what on earth is his excuse for abandoning other decrepit roads owned by the state government? Sango-Ota/Agbara is an industrial revenue generating area for the state; Abiodun should come to the public and tell us why he has completely left the roads in that axis in an unmotorable state. When his government failed, Covenant University owners are speculated to be constructing the road leading to the institution.

From the border town of Lagos/Ogun in Ajegunle, to Sango-Ota area, to Itori, Ifo, Ijoko, Akute and Papalanto, the pathetically bad state of the roads could not have been that of a state governed by a visionary governor.

Upon entering Abeokuta, the welcoming bad roads from Psychiatric hospital straight to Ita-Oshin, Olomore, Brewery, Lafenwa to Rounda, Enugada, Ago-Ika, Ajita’adun, Saje, Mokola to other areas daily inflict avoidable hardships on the inhabitants of the gateway state.

All these vital roads were left undone, but the governor has the funds to build an airport in Iperu Remo that may soon be a wasteful, unprofitable project for lack of envisaged patronage. If he had obtained a loan to finance a cargo port abandoned by Otunba Gbenga Daniel and redesigned as a full-fledged airport, it is nothing but a misplaced priority. Such a loan should have been used to develop economically strategic roads begging for government’s attention in Abeokuta, Sango-Ota/Akute axis including Agbado side of Ogun, Ijoko, Itele areas of the state.

Not even Governor Abiodun can deny that the main industrial hubs of the state are Sango-Ota, Abeokuta, and the Lagos/Ibadan express road axis bordering Lagos state. Rather than complete the Ijoko, Akute, Sango-Ota and other roads with industrial cum economic benefits to investors and commuters in the state, Abiodun is spending the state’s money on an elephant airport once abandoned project that the people will not use. Where’s the vision in the governor’s decision? Yet, Ogun workers are not being paid the minimum wage despite the huge allowance increase that the Tinubu government pays the state every month.

Dapo Abiodun is so far obviously not a good ambassador of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). One salient platform confirmed this fact. STATISENSE, a reputable policy pressure group, in its separately conducted two consecutive years’ reports for Y2024 and Y2025, affirmed Ogun State under Abiodun as toping the chart of states with the worst roads in the country.

The reports are readily available on the internet for inquisitive minds, and this is a gory public relations for a governor who claimed to have purportedly run a successful business before seeking election and reelection. With governors like Abiodun, the ruling APC, in any clean election, faces a Herculean task in 2027, except a sensible intervention occurs.

Yours sincerely asks: Where are the unbiased and uncompromised elders of the ‘Gateway State’ because their courageously unrelenting voices of wisdom and admonition for Abiodun are more important now to save Ogun state from avoidable infrastructural ruins? Let those who have ears and eyes and are perceptive quickly intervene to save Abiodun’s governed state from socio-political tsunami.

•Sanusi, former Managing Director, Lagos State Signage & Advertisement Agency, is currently the managing partner of AMS RELIABLE SOLICITORS.