The report that many residents of Edo State outside the state capital, Benin-City, have given Governor Godwin Obaseki a condition to fix their deplorable roads before they will vote for his candidate in the September 21 governorship election is really interesting. To them, the governor cannot perform so poorly and expect them to vote for his candidate.
For this reason, they want the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate, Asue Ighodalo, to prevail on the governor to at least do palliative works on some important roads in order not to be embarrassed by voters.
All the people of the state get from Governor Obaseki are blame games and excuses. The governor has not fixed strategic state roads, let alone volunteering to construct federal roads and requesting for a refund from the federal government.
Not even the all-important Benin-Auchi Road that leads to 12 out of the 18 local government areas of the state has caught his attention. As it is today, these 12 local government areas are cut-off from Benin-City, the state capital.
On many occasions, communities had protested the poor condition of the road with no meaningful response from the state government. The poor condition of the road is daily fueling insecurity, yet the state government has not made any efforts to get the federal government to fix the road.
The governor needs to tell the people of the state, which road he has constructed or rehabilitated since he came to power in 2016. Most of the roads constructed in Owan East and Owan West Local Government Areas by the Samuel Ogbemudia-led military administration have since started failing under the watch of Obaseki without any attention.
In fact, to access the two local governments today, the people have to go through Oloku Junction to connect the Benin-Owo-Akure Road.
To connect Ekpoma, Irrua, Uromi, Ubiaja and even Iruekpen, indigenes have resorted to taking the Benin-Asaba Expressway by Agbor junction.
The governor has been blaming the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led federal government for playing politics and abandoning federal roads in the state. But he was a member of the APC in his first term and still failed to attract the attention of the federal government to those roads.
