How many potholes have you encountered as you drive or walk around Ibadan, today? Potholes have taken over the roads in Ibadan, the capital city. Residents are spitting gallons of saliva complaining about the chaos these potholes are constituting on the roads.
The governor plies these roads like other residents of the city. Does he expect hashtag to trend before he declares state of emergency on potholes in the city? Should we trend #fixIbadanpotholes before he attends to it. Potholes are everywhere in Ibadan, even along roads leading to government house at Agodi.
Had it been the governor was once a roadside mechanic, conspiracy theory would have emerged that the governor deliberately left the roads to decay in order to reward his erstwhile colleagues in the mechanic industry. But he is an engineer, who powers street lights with diesel in 2023.
The roads in Ibadan are in poor condition. They are in coma in need of radical mastectomy, but the man at the helm at Agodi doesn’t see it as deserving emergency ward in his administrative agenda.
Ibadan is a capital city, but it does it look like one? The city neither develops nor underdevelops . When dirtiest cities are mentioned in Nigeria, Ibadan will drag the top spot with its fellow ‘colleagues’; when cities with chronic and perpetual potholes are mentioned, Ibadan would feature at the top. What is the excuse of Agodi in funding Oyo State Road Maintenance Agency, OYSROMA?
OYSROMA is nowhere to be found. They are suffering from paucity of funds like local governments in the state. Governor Makinde makes them redundant. Every year, he declares Operation Zero Potholes, but before the year ends, more holes are added than roads. When last did you see OYSROMA performing their duties. When last did you see local government tarring roads in the city?I, personally, haven’t seen any road started and completed by a local government chairman in Ibadan. I may be wrong on that!
People are mixing sand and cements to patch major roads. At Adetokun junction, along Ologuneru-Ido road, residents of the community had patched the roads with sand and cements, yet the spots remain albatross to those who ply the roads.
We can’t talk about how residential roads have become gutters. Many car owners visit mechanics every week, thanks to governor Makinde Effect. Someone told me he couldn’t drive his car as he used to because the roads are mechanic friendly. He said he has to buy a motorcycle taxi. And when it rains, which ordinary should be blessings, these dreaded roads make it death trap.
Even if you’re a spin doctor of the Agodi, you could see chaos the potholes are causing, and listen to whispering of the residents complaining about the skyrocketing numbers of holes than roads in the capital city. However, when you complain about these potholes on social media, PDP minions and the governor’s laundromats would unleash their venom of attacks accusing you of politics. To them, external critiques are political. They also ply these roads, but since they are beneficiaries from the decay, the pots in their pockets matter more than holes on the roads.
In 2022, the acting deputy governor, now the deputy-governor, Adebayo Lawal, said : “We want to package all the road networks, especially within the metropolis of Ibadan and see how we can transform and make them passable. Here, you can see that the situation of the road is very bad, meaning there must be an intervention to turn this road to a passable one. If we do this, our neighbourhood will be nice to look at. The environmental enhancement will be better and people will live in a healthy environment.”
Since 2022, when the Agodi representative made the statement, more potholes have established themselves as the occupants of Ibadan roads.
People know politicians lie; politicians themselves know they lie, but when lives are involved, lies should be buried at the pit of hell. We may not have data of lives that have been lost on the state of the roads or number of injured people due to these potholes, what Mr Governor needs to know is that, any live lost on the roads are on his administration. To a Mesiogo, half a word is enough!
Afeez Lasisi
Lasisiafiz@gmail.com
