Please permit me to call well on meaning people of Ogun State who are in regular contact with the Ogun State Governor, Prince Dapo Abiodun, to please call on the contractors handling the rehabilitation of the Abeokuta/Shagamu express road, to please adopt a more logical method in the road diversion in the course of the road rehabilitation.
Locking down the entire stretch of the Abeokuta inward lane right from the Interchange all through to the New Judicial Complex in Abeokuta, when there’s no major work on the entire stretch of the road does not sound or appear logical.
Already, there’s need for the expansion of the road on both sides due to heavy traffic on the road and we understand that the government is trying to rehabilitate the road as they are, instead of expansion, which is quite understandable, what is not clear is the motive behind closing down the entire stretch of the Abeokuta inward lane from the interchange, thereby forcing motorists to struggle for space on such a narrow path on such long distance.
On Saturday, 14th March 2020 at about 1845hrs, I witnessed a very horrible accident at Kajola, near Bara village involving a Toyota Corolla car and a couple, returning from a social function on their motorcycle, the Toyota car was on Top speed towards the interchange from Abeokuta while the couple on the motorcycle were coming from Shagamu.
The accident could’ve been avoided if the couple on the motorcycle never had any cause to share the same lane with the car coming from Abeokuta on very top speed.
Both the husband and the wife on the motorcycle died on the spot with their mangled remains placed on the road median.
Lots of other announced, unannounced and avoidable deaths had occurred on this road as a result of this meaningless and illogical traffic diversion.
One would’ve thought that the government would’ve used the opportunity of the Covid Lock Down and expected reduced traffic as a result of the Lock Down to mandate the contractors to speed up the project in order to reduce the hardship and inconveniences being caused by the road diversion, it was really disappointing to see that since the 14th March 2020 till today 27th May 2020 that I passed through the road again, I did not see a significant rehabilitation work on the road apart from the scrapped surface of the Abeokuta inward lane.
The only visible work on the road is the staggered reinforcement of the road median.
Expectedly, the contractors and especially the government may have excuses for the delay in the prompt execution of the project, but I don’t think there should be any valid excuse for such reckless and uninformed procedural lapses of closing more than 25 kilometers of road while meaningful work is yet to commence on the road.
The normal practice for similar projects are road diversion at maximum of every 2 kilometers where work will be concentrated upon and later reopened at the completion of the 2 kilometers while the two kilometers will be opened to traffic and another stretch closed again, fixed and reopened again until the project is completed.
Closing down more than 5 kilometers portion of a very busy road, a road which is not being submerged or has being rendered impassable is a kind of insensitivity to the plight of the road users and gross procedural lapses.
This is calling on the governor to call for the review of whatever motives behind the total closure of the entire stretch of the road in order to prevent continued loss of lives being caused by the longest road diversion ever seen in recent road rehabilitation project.
Deji Ogundimu is a concerned citizen.
