The governorship candidate of African Democratic Party (ADP) in Lagos State in the last election, Mr Babatunde Gbadamosi, has lamented the incessant traffic gridlock in the state, urging Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu to urgently sort out the problem which he said was easiest to do.
This was just as he said the palliative repair being done currently on the roads by the state government had not addressed the situation as Lagosians spent an average of eight hours daily in the traffic.
Gbadamosi said this at the weekend in an interactive session with newsmen, stating that the palliative repair as was being carried out was a waste of resources because it was just putting granites on the roads and compacting with rollers and then waiting for the rain to come and wash it away and repeating the process all over again and again.
The ADP chieftain said his position on the issue was not about standing in opposition or campaigning for election when it was not yet time, but about speaking up and helping the incumbent government about the right things to do, and “how they should be doing these things in a workable and practicable way.”
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“Regardless of platform, what is right is what is right and what is wrong is what is wrong. Some of us for whatever is worth, I have to start speaking up about the right things to do. If we are not going to contest for office, we could still help the incumbent government by pointing out the things that they should be doing and how they should be doing these things in a workable, practical way.
“It’s not just about criticising and pointing out the flaws, it’s about pointing out how best to achieve what we all want, you know, we all want better roads, we all want electricity, we all would like to have running water from our taps without reasons to maintain boreholes and wells, okay, we all would like these things. So whatever we can do to help the incumbent government to achieve these things, if we have their knowledge, then we should share, and that’s what I am doing,” Gbadamosi said.
Speaking on the state of roads and average travel time, the ADP governorship candidate, while maintaining his dislike for the palliative measures being applied by state government under Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, said the asphalt they said they said they could not apply on them because of rain was still not done for most of the roads now that the rain had stopped.
“I once spent three and a half hours travelling from Lekki Phase 1 to Ibeju-Lekki, I was in the traffic and I know that people spend up to three and four hours within Ikorodu in traffic.
“So the governor needs to wake up and sort out these lowest of the low hanging fruits, road repairs, road construction. It is the easiest thing to do in the world, it’s not that hard. We can achieve a lot and we can achieve it faster and more strategically than we are doing in the area of road construction,” he said.
He recalled: “As I have said, the first road to be built, the first major road to be built in Nigeria was built by the people of Ikorodu. It was Ikorodu road and they finished the 50km of it within six years, self- funding, self-built, from Ikorodu to St Agnes Church in Yaba between 1947 and 1953.
“So if they could do that then, many years ago before independence, without the intervention of the colonialists, what can’t we achieve now if we put our minds to it? That’s really the problem because we are not putting our minds to it.”
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