7th September, 2011
After the death of 38 persons in a gruesome crash on the Ilesha/ Owo/Benin expressway last week, the Ondo State Government has commenced the repair of the bad portions of the road, throwing punches to boot, at the Federal authorities, over their inaction in maintaining their roads.
The State Commissioner of Works and Infrastructural Maintenance, Mr Gboye Adegbenro who supervised the rehabilitation of the road at Ilu Abo today, on behalf of the State Government, feared that unless concrete actions were urgently taken by the Federal Government to fix its bad roads, the heavy traffic build up on the roads especially during the coming Yuletide may result into more disasters.
According to him, “I was told that the contract for this road has been awarded to a contractor for sometime now, up till now nothing had been done till this incident occurred. Recently we pleaded with the Federal Government to pay attention to the Ore-Sagamu-Benin road when people were complaining of the terrible situation, though they called us names, yet they promised of fixing the road. It has been an issue for sometime now.
“Look at what happened now on another federal highway. FERMA should be more responsible and responsive to its functions and duties; they should also clear the road shoulders. The state government through the Ministry of Works decided to rehabilitate the gullies on this road to prevent unnecessary loss of lives on these federal highways that fall within Ondo State territory.
“We as responsible holders of the people’s mandate cannot compromise the sanctity of human lives, hence our intervention in this matter. We cannot continue to wait for Federal Government, who knows what may happen next and the youths dying as a result of some people’s negligible acts are our future leaders. We cannot fold our arms and just be watching avoidable carnage happening on our roads; we have to do something quickly.
On the dispute over the refund of the estimated N12billion being owed the State by the Federal Government on roads rehabilitated on its behalf, the Commissioner said “for every road repair done by the state government on behalf of the Federal Government, the state is supposed to be reimbursed, but payment used to be a difficult issue.
“We have worked for them, we have written them. Recently after visiting Ore when the issue of who owes who, how much do they owe came up, Abuja sent a delegation here and we checked our records to determine the way forward. The issue is being tackled now,†Adegbenro explained.
As the bulldozers rolled to work, exposing the burial site of the victims of last week’s crash, commuters and passers-by on the Ilesha-Owo-Benin Expressway wailed uncontrollably and hurled unprintable abuses on the road managers.