10th October, 2012
Chairman of the Lagos State House of Assembly Committee on Works, Rotimi Olowo, speaks with Assembly Matters, on the condition of some roads in the state. He gives reasons for the bad condition of some of the roads and what the government is doing concerning the situation
As Chairman, House Committee on Works, please assess the roads in Lagos State.
In Lagos State, we have many roads and some of the roads are being taking up by the state government because the Federal Government has not repaired them. Some of the roads belong to the local governments, but the state government is taking them up since the local councils cannot also maintain them. I can tell you that the state government has done much in terms of maintenance of the roads. Where we have over 20 million people with a land size of about 3,744 square kilometres, you will appreciate the fact that there is going to be a lot of pressure on the roads.
The state is doing a lot of things; I just came back from inspection in Alimosho, Ojo, Egbeda area, Ibeju Lekki, Ikorodu Road, Epe and others. We are working on the roads, there are some that are so bad, but because this is rainy season, we advised all the contractors to concentrate on the drains and after the rain; they can start the asphalting and construction of the roads.
Also, you will appreciate the fact that Lagos State will never compromise standards, there is no road constructed in Lagos State that will not have drainages on both sides and walkways which residents could make use of. A lot of jobs are going on and contractors are on site. You also know that Lagos State is moving and the government of the state is working hard to ensure the roads are motorable. In some of the areas we went to; like Yaba and Ahoyaya in Ibeju Lekki, Ebute-Metta, Ogba-Ijaiye Road and some others, we noticed a lot of anomalies that would be documented in our report.
But why are some of the roads still in such bad shape despite government’s effort?
Every government has its own responsibilities. The fact is that a lot of demands are on the state government because it is one of the few states that are working and working hard; that however does not presuppose the fact that what is meant for the federal government should be done by the state government. The state government approves money as Local Government Intervention Fund every year, but that does not mean that the state will carry all the burden of both the local and the federal governments. You will also appreciate that we cannot do all the roads simultaneously.
There is a road in Yaba that leads to Iddo, that is a state road and we did it well. There are some inner, feeder roads which are local government roads, but due to their utility value and because of their length, the state government comes in. There are even some roads like the Ikorodu Road that belongs to the federal government, but because those roads are used by the residents of the state, obviously we cannot allow our people to die through accidents because the roads are bad. So, even if the road is that of the federal or the local government and it needs palliative measure, we do it. That is why we have the Public Works Corporation (PWC), which is an agency under the
Ministry of Works and Infrastructure and the House of Assembly voted about N4 billion for it this year. The agency is doing well. They work both in the day and in the night. Even during rains, they do coat patching with special cement produced by WAPCO, so you don’t have to wait till after the rainy season to do it.
What are the efforts of your committee to compliment the executive arm in this regard?
I have been to many local governments and many of the contractors cannot work because of rain and many of the areas are flood-prone. For those areas, we cannot start constructing roads, we do the drains and after the drains, we can start constructing the roads later. If we do the roads without constructing the drains, when there is flood, the roads would be destroyed as water would find its level.
In addition to that, we are working on the Facilities and Maintenance Bill. Its not just to have the roads, we must have a schedule of maintenance; when they are due for maintenance and rehabilitations, you should not waste time. You remember the government of Buhari and Idiagbon, which initiated the Petroleum Trust Fund through which they built a lot of roads and you cannot pin point any of those roads now because they have a life span. If you don’t put up a maintenance schedule, just like a human being, when you get to your point of termination, you will terminate. The same thing goes for infrastructure. When they are put in place, and you don’t put in place a maintenance schedule, when they call for it and you don’t have a way of maintaining them, they will spoil.
What we are doing in Lagos is that we don’t just construct the roads, we have to look at its soil texture and ask questions like is it a road that needs asphalt materials? Is it stone-based? Is it a road that you can use inter-locking bricks like we have in Ibeju-Lekki, in Lamgbasa, Abakekere? If you go to these places I mentioned, you would see that we used inter-locking tiles. If we use asphalt and it rains, since the place is swampy, it would spoil over time. But with inter-locking, it will last. So, we are not just going to build, we will build according to the peculiarity of each area.
I will tell you that the state government is doing well in this regard.
Most roads categorised as local government roads are very bad…
You must be scientific when it comes roads. We do not expect the local governments to start giving you roads for the sake of giving you roads. Let us look at the initial problems, let there be drains that will connect us to canals and primary drains connected to tertiary drains. For example, Igi Olugbin is supposed to be a local government road, but because of the length of the road as it starts from Abule in Bariga to Pedro Road, the state government has awarded it, but we cannot commence work on it. To start with, we will concentrate on the drains because when you look at after Bariga, the canal is almost completed and it is when this is fully complete with work on the drain that we can now talk about working on the road. Children are going from one place to another and they would make use of the walkways built by the government rather than walking on the road and be vulnerable to accidents. Most of the drainages in Lagos State are not properly channelled. Like I said, I am just coming from Ahoyaya and most of the drainages there are not properly channelled and the water is on the same spot.
So what are you doing on the drainages?
It is not advisable for a Community Development Association to start building drains. I expect all the developers, CDAs or residents association to link up with the environment department in their respective local governments. Even if they are going to use their money to do the drains, they can consult the engineer of the local government for advice on how the drains should be interconnected. But many of them would just construct their own drains; many of them would encroach into the setback and have their own drains. You cannot expect alignment, and at the end of the day, everything would fall back on the state or local government. It has to start from the end users. If you know that you can construct it on your own because you want development and you have put resources together, you cannot do that without the approval of the local government. You cannot build on a setback, you need to consult the local government for technical advice.
Most of the roads repaired by PWC have been washed away by flood…
It is not only in Lagos State, even if you go to Europe, they are just getting to summer, all those Iceland would melt and we are using the same ocean; the Atlantic Ocean cuts across many countries of the world, it would increase the volume of water and where will the water come to? In Nigeria today, Lagos State is at the lowest ebb of the country in terms of placement. Any water coming from Oyo and other places comes to Lagos; we have the lagoon here, the ocean, so it is for our people to know that it is not limited to Lagos. Also, due to climate change, a lot of water is being released because of the activities of man, and many people build their houses on the canal and if the government wants to demolish the houses, they would say the government of Governor Babatunde Fashola does not have human feeling. Can we say because of an individual, the whole community should suffer? Should anyone be above the law?
If you look at it, it bothers on the fact that we are the enemies of ourselves. Some people don’t know that we have a master plan that has been distorted because people fail to adhere strictly to it. And if perhaps you block the drains, where do you want the water to go? It will find its level. You too can be of assistance in terms of advocacy in the language the people understand so that we can enlighten them.
People need to get prepared, it is not only Lagos that was flooded, Ogun, Oyo and even some European countries were flooded. It is not as if we are not working, we are doing our bit; our people must be informed that Ozone layer has been depleted and there is climate change based on human activities such as gas exploration and other activities that are impacting negatively on the climate. So what we need to do is to manage it. We manage our lives, so we should manage the environment. You that live on the low bed, make your drains free.
While going round, I saw a man dropping debris into the drain from a storey building and I was mad, I asked him ‘what’s your problem?’ He didn’t mind that we were around. When they block the drains and use it as refuse dump and rains come, they would start complaining. Everything should not be for the state government to handle; people should do the right thing. LAWMA is moving round to remove the debris that we used to have many years back, but this has not changed the attitude of our people. That is why we use barb wire to surround the drainage sometimes, but the government cannot do everything.