Impassable roads: Agony, groan, grumbling as rain season begins
Yinka ADETUNJI
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Rain ought to come with joy especially in view of its support for crop cultivation and deliverance from the harshness of hot season but it’s often a moment suffused with widespread groaning in most communities in Nigeria. This is because roads’ degradation during this period becomes aggravated. Resultant erosion and increased water volume pound the soils which easily give way causing roads to collapse.
A drive round the city of Ogbomoso in Oyo state as an instance will most agonisingly reveal this problem. Roads previously being managed to ply by
communities have started to cave in becoming unmotorable.
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The photographs below show the dire situation at a sub-section of Iwagba area, Imole Ayo Baptist Church, east side of Federal Government College.
Then, the ones below illustrate the situation at Ogbegun. The 600m long access road was constructed less than two years ago but it’s already failing particularly at the portion adjoining the bridge which was constructed at the same time. The portion is sinking and now water accumulates in the cavity created when it rains. In a few weeks that road will become impassable again. “That will be hellish, we passed through great hardship the other time as we had to go long distance before reaching the main road. We appeal government will urgently fix the portion maybe with concrete, that was done once at another portion, this one needs intervention and urgently too,” a resident, who gave his name simply as Adekanmi, told Ogbomoso Insight.
That is the picture of most roads in Ogbomoso and beyond today. It is a tale of uncharted roads in state of disrepair and of charted ones, paved ones, already in decay riddled with potholes and craters.
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The state government has no time for roads outside the state capital and regrettably has incapacitated local governments to undertake road repairs and constructions. Gone were the days when local governments were in the forefront of providing and maintaining road infrastructure, when new communities were quickly gilded with good road networks. Councils cannot today construct culverts; councils are incapable of road grading any longer; road maintenance is now out of their reach. Even dredging of streams they cannot undertake. Local governments have become laughing stocks, a shadow of themselves. No thanks to the atrocious abrogation of local government autonomy by the rapacious governors.
The governors need to tame their rapacity and allow people outside state capitals to also breathe. Let our roads be fixed, let new communities’ roads be constructed. The state belongs to all of us. We all desire good life, we all detest pain, agony, groaning which infect us when we daily are confronted with bad roads.
Meanwhile, inspite of the cash crunch at the local governments, we call on chairmen to find means to upturn the deplorable condition of roads across the council areas. Urgent actions have to be taken to secure the different areas from being eaten up by gully erosion.
