A Public Affairs analyst and a concerned Ondo South stakeholder, Mr. Omoyele Olabode has bemoaned the sorry spectacle that the Ore/Okitipupa highway has become in recent time.
According to reports gathered, a portion of the Aye/Ore road few kilometers after the Irele junction cum Military check point has become heavily portholed with the supposed road now almost a diameter of an evolving gully.
The rainy season has reportedly not helped the condition of the road as poor road drainage system has badly affected the little that is left of the asphalt lay on the road.
Olabode in an exclusive media chat with newsmen noted that the state of that major connecting route to Ondo South from Ore, commercial hub of the district, deserves urgent public attention.
He noted that as the road becomes gradually impassable and unmotorable, if people of good conscience show indifference and going on feigning unconcern disposition, it will turn to a collective challenge in the nearest possible time, as the eventual damage to that road may cut off Ondo South away from the rest of the state.
Olabode averred that the argument over whether it is a state road or a Federal road pans into insignificance once the road assumes a terrible state of abandonment to the point in which it becomes a deathtrap, God forbid.
“I want to sincerely call on operatives of Federal Road Management Agency (FERMA); I want to plead with the civil and road construction Department of The Federal Ministry of works and I want to appeal to the State Ministry of Works to kindly pay detail attention t the state of the Aye/Ore-Okitipupa road without bias to wether it is a Federal or a state road.
If it is possible for an interagency effort and collaboration towards correcting quite early the already damaging part of this major connecting road, the people of Ondo South will be extremely grateful to the government.
“Campaign for the second term of President Bola Tinubu will soon start and we don’t want our area to be a laughing stock when Nigerian politicians will come around on the entourage of the big wigs of APC apparatchik to the Okitipupa Division and see that a portion of our major high way now has a wide in diameter gaping hole that offers disaster to motor parts.
“We are lucky that the badly damaged road has not recorded fatalities but that does not mean it has not been damaging cars and wasting useful man-hours on the route. We don’t want to open our eyes and watch the road claim lives of our people, hence this passionate appeal,” Olabode added.