by Isi Esene

The Lagos State Government has announced its intention take advantage of the lull in the rains to engage in massive road repairs across the state.

This plan was announced recently by Gbenga Akintola, the Executive Chairman of Lagos State Public Works Corporation, who reiterated the government’s commitment to carry out maintenance work on roads in the metropolis.

He explained that the corporation earmarked 1,400 roads for repair this year, adding that repair work has been carried out in 580 roads between January and August this year.

Lagosians are, however, calling on the Babatunde Fashola administration to step up its game by repairing even more roads to ease the flow of traffic and increase economic activities in the state.

Case in point is the Oduduwa/Karounwi/Ijesha link road which has been in a state of disrepair for years without a flicker of hope for a remedy. The road which links Kilo, a bustling suburb of Surulere, to Lawanson and on to the Oshodi-Apapa Expressway has gotten no attention from the state government despite its potential to ease traffic along that axis.

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Commuters have complained about the bad state of the road wondering if they have been abandoned by a governor who hails from Surulere Local Government Area.

According to a commercial tricyclist who plies the Kilo-Karounwi route: “This our road has not been repaired in years. There is no good drainage here so things get even worse whenever it rains. The government is not helping us at all.”

A commercial motorcyclist who simply identified himself as Musa said the bad road “disturbs our business.”

“They (government) sent in caterpillars to do the canal at Anifowose but they are yet to do anything meaningful. We don’t even know what is happening,” he said.

The bad road also has a negative effect on businesses in the area with shop owners complaining of low patronage due to the inaccessibility of the area.

While reacting to allegations of neglect of inner roads by the Fashola government, Kadiri Hamzat, the Commissioner for Works and Infrastructure had, in a recent interview, said the government is doing its best to make Lagos roads motorable.

Hamzat said, “There are major roads across the State. Some are Federal roads while some belong to the State. The challenge is that it is important that these major roads are fully motor-able before we fix a huge number of the inner roads. Hence, the State Government has gone ahead and fixed a lot of the Federal roads thereby reducing our ability to fix the State road financially. However, the State government has embarked on and constructed a lot of the major roads and others are also under construction as we speak all across the length and breadth of the State.

“Last year we started the construction of 156 roads and majority of it are inner roads. It is important to also state that we have to manage the numbers of roads we are constructing at a time to prevent gridlock,” he said.

With the 2015 elections drawing nearer, such noticeable infrastructural deficiencies will be a minus on the otherwise sterling scorecard of Gov. Fashola’s eight year long All Progressives Congress (APC) administration.

Isime Esene