Travelogue: The Lambe Road Safari, By Bamidele Johnson

I got to Lambe through Akute yesterday morning and told myself that former Ogun State governor Ibikunle Amosun must have been vaccinated with the blood of Adolf Hitler. Or maybe Pol Pot. His government levelled buildings on both sides of the road on the pretext of building a six-lane highway. The road, of course, never came. Livelihoods vanished. Livability tanked. Public funds evaporated. Lives were lost. The man goes around grinning in anthill-size caps.

That corridor remains rough and tough for those who live there, but at least the Dapo Abiodun administration looks like it may finally deliver a functional road, even if it is not the deranged six-lane fantasy Amosun hawked. Nobody there is asking for an autobahn or a Dubai-level highway. The residents would kill to have a smooth road, any smooth road. That is the dream. Big up to Abiodun for trying to lessen the pains. People say he is only doing his job. If doing the job were the norm, that corridor would not look like the aftermath of a demolition derby.

If and when this road is completed and it lasts, it will lift the economic, physical and, most of all, mental health of people along the axis. I am sure you are wondering why “if” has been deployed. It is because the road may not be completed. I plead guilty to erring on the side of skepticism and cynicism. What also worries me is the absence of plans for the hundreds of feeder roads linking the main stretch. Once I turned off to Lambe, I told my cousin who was in the car with me that life expectancy in those communities could not be anywhere beyond 35 years.

My cousin replied that if the bandits and terrorists giving the Federal Government a runaround and Donald Trump crimson eyeballs ever shift base to those communities, even the American president with his guns-a-blazing talk would backpedal and say: “Eyin omo ogun, e pada.”

I hardly struggle for words, but the roads in Lambe defy vocabulary. I drove through Iba Festus Akanbi’s Keredolu to avoid Jolasoco on my way to Otun, which has a treacherous slopes and gullies combo. I could not help but wonder what Ifo Local Government has EVER done for the people in that area. Not every road is a state responsibility.

People say councils lack funds. More funds would only fuel more meaningless spending. And if the office is so powerless, why do politicians risk their testicles to occupy it? Who has represented these communities in the state and federal legislatures since 1999? We need to know them. One former state legislator from that axis is now a commissioner. She achieved nothing in office, unless you count attending prize-giving days at my children’s school and failing to finish an ICT centre in Lambe. I was told she returned to strip out whatever equipment she had installed after losing re-election. That is a reminder that believing a politician likes you is the same as believing a stripper is head-over-heels because you are holding wads of cash.

If I had my way, every representative of that axis since 1999 would receive the kind of treatment Rawlings once made famous. I would visit the graves of the departed among them and pump them full with hot lead. I would not rule out IEDs to ensure they are killed dead! When I ended up on the same flight to Abuja in September with Lanre Tejuosho, who represented the area in the 8th Senate, the urge to express my disgust through a dropkick was strong.

The governors and council chairmen have been poor performers, but the so-called representatives in the legislatures since 1999 have been just as unfeeling. Not one of them has thought of delivering a single road as a constituency project. Sometimes you wonder what has happened to Ayelala that it has become this supine or if Soponna has been compromised along with Lukuluku, Saluku and Omunale. Those deities should have finished off those guys long ago.

They deserve worse. As useless as my urine is, I would not pee on any one of them if they were on fire. A scalding solution for zinc galvanising would treat them more kindly than their record deserves.