By Divine Sam
Residents and commercial transporters operating in Elebu community, in ibadan, Oluyole Local Government Area of Oyo State have groaned badly over the deplorable conditions of the road connecting their various movements to Akala Expressway and for their businesses and other activities.
The residents, some of who live and operate from the community, lamented the hardship they had been experiencing while plying the road to navigate their destinations in the community.
During an on-the-spot assessment to examine the condition of the road, one of our editors observed that there were massive potholes on the road that usually become worse during the rainy season and has long due for repair.
Our editor also observed as vehicles driven by motorists got stuck at different parts of the road, right from elebu junction deep down the bridge at orita marrin.
Speaking with our correspondent, an okada rider Festus kayode, who claimed that he decided to be operating on okada because his bus got stuck in one of the potholes during a downpour leading to serious breakdown of the vehicle, said, “I’m tired of plying this road. How much am I collecting from passengers to continue to face this kind of suffering of repairing my bus and now I’ll start repairing my okada?”
Another driver, who lives in the ican school road, and gave his name simply as Dimeji, lamented spending money on repairing his vehicle that was damaged by the bad road.
He said, “You will end up spending all your earnings to fix your car because of the bad road. You will be surprised that there are many rich and influential people living in this community. I don’t know how they manage the situation because they drive expensive cars.”
The Baale Elebu community Alhaji Yekini Salami and the community chairman, Alhaji Najimudeen Kola, pleaded the government led by the state governor, His Excellency Engr. Seyi Makinde, to assist the community regarding the well furnished and functioning primary health centre the governor built and commissioned to profuse health and safety solutions to the area.
Alhaji Najimudeen, while interacting with Newsieevents Metro on Thursday evening together with social welfare officer of the community Akammi Aderemi, explained that people in the community had been donating money to facilitate the pouring of asphalt on the road to mitigate the situation yet all efforts proves abortive as it’s still difficult to arrest the dilapidated nature of the community road.
“As a community, we are trying our best to put some things on the road, when His Excellency Gov Seyi Makinde came to Commissioned the primary health centre he assured to helped the community to fix the road but since then, all though we know he’s trying to reposition the state Executive Council. The road has been like this for years. In this area, there is no sign of local government. We are begging them to assist us,” kola said.
He said that the bad condition of the road had been discouraging people from living in the community or initiating economy growing activities in the area.
We also interacted with some shop owners in the area, one of the trading on foodstuffs who gave us her name as Mummy Aderibigbe said “We face gridlock on various locations in ibadan like some of us living at tipper garage which is another terrible environment, and you come into the area again that you’re doing business and meet another bad thing. Before the election, some government officials came to make promises that they would do something about the road, we are still expecting them to fulfil their promise. The Elebu community road is supposed to be handled by the state government at least to compliment the health centre, if you have good health centre of that magnitude and there’s no road to access it what’s the usefulness of the place? ”
Contacted before filling this report on Thursday evening the Chairman House Committee on works state House of Assembly, said even though they’re new in the office but from indications the government under governor Seyi Makinde had been trying its best, adding that the Elebu Road was among many other community roads that needed government intervention in the state and the “listening” government of the day is working on all modalities to ensure demands for good quality roads are met