The Governor of Lagos State, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, has appealed to residents to be patient with his administration about the worsening state of the roads and the concomitant gridlock in the State. The Chief Executive of the State made this disclosure on Tuesday, October 2, while speaking on the Platform, a program by the Covenant Christian Center themed “Redesigning the Nigerian Economy with New Ideas”. He explained that the worsening state of Lagos roads was occasioned by the rainy season which has been on since his ascension to the throne 4 months ago. There rains have virtually crippled both the construction and maintenance aspects of the roads business. Sanwo-Olu promised that there would be extensive and massive rehabilitation of roads after the raining season, but added that all the roads cannot be fixed at the same time.
According to the governor, it had been raining since he was sworn-in, pointing out that bitumen reacts adversely with rain and as a result slowed down all on-going construction and maintenance work on the roads.
The Governor said besides rainy season, the poor state of the roads was worsened by the water level in the State, it’s small landmass and population explosion. All these, he reiterated, were responsible for the heavy traffic congestion experienced in the State. But all those notwithstanding, he revealed to Lagosians that his government’s remedy for the traffic problems experienced on a daily basis was a multi-modal transportation system.
He stressed that this would involve developing the rail, water transportation and bus transit system which the government was already working on. He said,
“On water transportation, we have just acquired 7 new passenger-boats capable of conveying 60-70 passengers at once”. On the commercial motorcycle operators popularly known as Okada, he said the administration was trying to harmonise and regulate their operations to strike a balance between convenience and security, as an outright ban is almost impossible given the peculiarity of the State. “This is designed to know who they are, their activities and how to manage them for security purposes and to ensure they don’t inadvertently add to the already existing gridlock; we don’t want to disenfranchise anybody”, said the Governor.
