A visit to the area revealed that Adesina and Ijesha roads up to Ijesha Market, Omilani Street and Airways Road were in deplorable conditions. Other adjoining streets were in worse state, needing very urgent attention.
Work on Adesina Road had begun some time ago but was abandoned as soon as it was started. There were a series of failed portions on Ijesha Road around the police station. The roads were strewn with potholes and the rains had not made them any better. They all look visibly rundown and posed very serious threat to the safety of people of the area.
A resident, Mr. Ben Onunwa said: “Roads in Ijesha are quite disgusting. For the past 12 to 15 months, Adeshina Road down to Ilamoye has being very bad. There has not been any form of maintenance on this road. In the past, rather than receiving full rehabilitation, it only got some patching
“The Fashola regime thought it wise to do the road but only ended up doing just only one side of the drainage system. This has, so far, caused more harm than good to the road. Transporters and commuters were all happy when construction started on the road, but things have gone back to where they were. Everyone finds it very difficult to use this road.
“Look at the road which connects Ijesha Market; it also looks as if it has been abandoned. They started work on it from Cele and Lawanson areas and stopped at Ijesha Market and since then, that point has being causing a lot of traffic. The road was motorable until 2009/2010 when it became worse.”
A woman who identified herself as Shade, a shop owner, cried out that the bad state of Adesina Road had destabilised her business. “Once it rains, everywhere is flooded; there is no where for passersby or customers to pass,” she said.
Mr. Saheed, a commercial motorbike operator, was equally angry over the state of things. He narrated how he sustained an injury while trying to navigate the road.
More of the residents also complained about their pains and anguish as a result of the abandoned drainage system on Adesina Road. Mama Chukwuma, who lives in the area, also affirmed that it lacked a proper drainage system “This is getting out of hand. When it rains, since we live close to the gutter, we suffer a lot because the road has no drainage. The floodwater is not flowing and since the water has nowhere to flow to, it ends up in our rooms. It has destroyed most of our property, causing us lots of harm.”
Her experience was corroborated by a lady who identified herself as Miss Judith. She equally complained about the poor drainage and the menace of flooding in Ijesha as a result of the bad roads.
Ibrahim, a tricycle operator in Ijesha, complained about how he and his colleagues had been spending lots of money repairing their vehicles. Mr. Innocent, an official of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), tricycle section, Ijesha, also expressed sadness over the worsening state of roads in the area.
He said: “This Adesina Road has being like this for more than three years now. If they had left it the way it was, that would have been better. But they destroyed it without providing any drainage on one side of it. Now, it is affecting everyone. Floodwater now finds its way into the road, remains there and has cut the road at various spots. You can see potholes everywhere. These potholes damage the engines of the keke, causing them to break down every now and then. It involves a lot of money to repair them. The operators spend thousands of naira to put their vehicles in order every week.”
He revealed that the union collected N200 regularly from each tricycle operator to get truckload of laterite to fill bad spots on the road so as to reduce damage to the tricycles. He, therefore, urged the government to look into the matter.
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