By Our Correspondent
Commuters plying the Ado-Ilawe expressway in Ekiti state are stranded after a portion of the road caved in on Wednesday morning.
The road recently became an alternative route for commuters, including residents of the state, due to the deplorable state of the Akure-Ado expressway.
Asiwaju Oladimeji, a resident of the state, accused the federal government of abandoning federal roads in Ekiti.
Oladimeji said the federal government frustrated the funding secured by the state government from the African Development Bank (AfDB) to construct federal roads.
“The caving in of the Ado-Ilawe road happened this morning. This is the road people usually follow to avoid some of the bad portions of Akure-Ado road, now the road has become bad too,” he said.
“We have some major roads connecting to Ekiti. At the moment they are in a terrible state. The Ado-Akure road is a no-go area, the Ero/Aramokun/Igede roads are bad and many other federal roads in Ekiti are in deplorable condition.
“Right now all the federal roads that exit Ekiti to Akure, Ibadan, Lagos and other states are in total collapse. Unfortunately, these are federal roads.
“There is a problem with federal roads in Ekiti. We have been abandoned by the federal government.”
In June 2019, the Ekiti state government announced that AfDB had expressed readiness to provide financial support for the upgrade of infrastructure in the state, including fixing the Ado Ekiti-Akure road.
In June 2022, Kayode Fayemi, governor of Ekiti, said the federal government refused to grant approval for the dualisation of the expressway.
“I have spent the last three years on the subject of this road. I finally got them to award the dualisation in November 2019 at the cost of N30 billion. To date, the contractor has only received N2 billion,” Fayemi had said.
“I then got money from the AFDB for the road through Akinwumi Adesina (AFDB President), and the federal government refused to cede the road to Ondo and Ekiti states and threatened us there will be no refund if we went ahead and tempered with their road.”
0 Comments