TheCable

BY OPEOLUWA ADEDAYO

If you’re looking for magical road repairs this election season, come to the Alagbole area of Ogun state.

First, let’s rewind to recent history.

Sometime before 2019, I think it was in 2018, I stumbled on the Alagbole-Akute area as a choice location for affordable housing. A friend/colleague had just moved into the area, and I had heard a lot about how the place was ‘opening eye’ but there was hell to pay on some bridge. I decided on meeting with my account balance and after making calculations to and from work, I went for an apartment in the area. After all, people had lived there. How bad could this bridge be anyway?

I had been given a brief insight into the bridge situation, especially during the rainy season, but I assumed that there was no way the road was still the same.

Remembering that decision to move to Akute now, I wish all over again that I was wrong in all shades of wrong! Over the four years that I have passed the Akute-Alagbole route, I have fallen off okadas into slimy muddy waters and been in a vehicle that lost control while descending the slope. How we didn’t crash into the water below remains a miracle to date.

I remember earlier asking questions about the construction of the bridge on a day I slipped off an okada, but all I got was some mumbo-jumbo about the Ibikunle Amosun administration promising to complete it.

Then the Dapo Abiodun government took over power, and the bridge became the next best thing for commuters. Upon inquiry, I heard that residents decided to use the bridge even though persons who saw it being constructed said it needed finishing touches. It’s been years now, and it doesn’t seem that bridge would ever be completed. Have I told you the bridge gets flooded at intervals too?

It’s 2023. Surprise! Surprise! If you use the said bridge regularly, you’d have noticed that the road after the bridge on its way into Alagbole has finally got some level of grading attention. However, for some reason, one side of the road has been fully graded to some point, but the other side has been left untouched. And it has been days now since that side was completed.

At this point, one must ask. What happened for years that the road was left to its fate? Why is that by some magic, the road is suddenly within the memory vicinity of the present government? And what in the world is the reason for repairing one lane and leaving the other bare? This last question has been stressful to think about every time I pass that road. Seems like pure confusing magic!

Anyway, while one may as well embrace the instant magic of the feverish pre-election road repairs, we’ll wait and see if the Ogun state government has what it takes to sustain this high temperature on the grading before we make our decision at the polls come March.

However, whatever happens, government officials need to do better because the people deserve better. Governor Abiodun, especially, needs to understand that governance goes beyond taking emperor-like photographs with plastic fan-holding youths as props, advertising Forbes wins that one has to keep wondering the criteria for the award, travelling around the country on the presidential campaign while dust from road repairs pepper the weather, and again, posing for photographs and smiling about what is not immediately clear.

Ogun residents deserve quality governance!

Adedayo writes from Ogun state and can be contacted via [email protected]