Is this road jinxed?

The poser above is in respect of Osogbo–Ilesa Road in Osun State. For decades, not much attention had been paid to any comprehensive rehabilitation of this vital road. There had been a series of haphazard interventions like the construction of one or two new bridges and some spot patchings thereon.

Incidentally, this road had been one of the busiest in this area of the state. Over the years, people going to Ekiti State, Ondo State, Edo State, and up to the Eastern states have been plying this route. Also, it has always been a road on which you can safely travel at most times of the day and the night, right from the days of the famous “Ajanaku Transport Service”. Even in recent times, the road played a crucial role in easing the accommodation problem in Osogbo, the Osun State capital. When the state was created, many officers had to live in Ilesa and environs to come to work in Osogbo. All the same, successive governments have refused to acknowledge the usefulness of this vital road and effect a comprehensive rehabilitation.

The social and economic benefits that can be derived from making this road pliable can hardly be overemphasised. Incidentally, the road passes through some ‘food basket’ areas and hence you can easily find various farm products always displayed for sale along the route. On top of this, the route is, and can serve better, as connecting ones for people in Osogbo and, by extension, people from adjoining states of Oyo and Kwara to connect to Akure, Ile-Ife and hence to Edo and other states in the East and the South South.

I am surprised that over the years, our political rulers have not realised the importance of rehabilitating “connecting roads” like this Osogbo-Ilesa route and their potentials for improving the general welfare of the people. Instead, there is this obsession with dualising township roads which are damn expensive and fraught with attendant discomfort and dislocations to the general public.

I am therefore passionately pleading that the current administrations, federal or state, should please see to the immediate rehabilitation/modernisation of this very crucial road. Posterity will never forget whoever or whatever organisation does this.

’Femi Osunro, Ibadan.