A least twenty five federal and other roads across various parts of Osun State are undergoing different kinds of rehabilitation and repair through the intervention of the State government.
The Special Adviser to the Governor on Transport, Engineer Olatoke Olaniyan stated this on Tuesday when his team visited one of the ongoing projects in Iwo, the headquarters of Iwo local government area of the State.
He said the road construction which had been abandoned by the federal government could not be left unattended to, as the people of the state bear the brunt.
“The duty of any government is to see to the welfare of its citizens, whether the road belongs to the federal government or any other tiers, if the situation requires that the state intervenes, a responsible government will come.
“For a long time now, this road has been virtually abandoned. The stretch that passes through the town actually divides the town into two. The Governor directed that in order to ameliorate the suffering of the citizens we should come in here and fix the bad portions” he said.
Engr. Olaniyan who said the State government was not able to get approval from the federal government for the exercise after repeated efforts stated that the state would bear the cost with a view to ameliorate suffering of the people.
He said “What we are doing here is to spot-patch and spot-rehabilite the portions of the road so that we can restore normalcy for movement of vehicles and human traffic.
“We have tried repeatedly to seek the attention of the FG to fix this road, perhaps due to issues that are not making things easy for them to come over, we haven’t got the necessary response. But if we are waiting for that it means we are going to send our people into long years of suffering. Even if we are going to bear the cost as long as it makes our people comfortable and improves their socioeconomic wellbeing the State government is happy to do that.”
Speaking the inspection tour of Ikirun/Obaagun/Ire, Otan/Ila axis of the project, the General Manager, Osun Road Maintenance Agency, ORMA Engr. Shola Ajao said the road intervention project is spread across the State and would the completed before the rainy season.
On the Iwo road project intervention, Ajao stated that the government is fixing the Awe Junction/Bowen University axis for smooth human and vehicular movement.
He added, “We have divided the state into six zones, we have Ikirun/Ila, Iwo/Ejigbo, Ife/Ijesha, Osogbo/Ede and Gbongan/Ikire and others. We have spread it across the nooks and crannies of the state.
“We will complete the project before rainy season and that is why we are working day and night to ensure that all areas mapped out are completed.”
In the inspection tour was the State Commissioner of Information, Mrs Funke Egbemode and her team from the ministry.
