When it rains, people are expected to show gratitude to God, especially
because of the cool weather condition which the rainfall comes with.
But this is not so for some residents of Lagos state and its environs, as they would rather the sunshine remains, even if they feel exceeding hardship, as they believe that the rainfall is more like a curse to them.
Naij.com went out to speak with some residents of these areas and they outrightly lamented the hardship which rainfalls off any magnitude expose expose them to.
Residents of Odogunyan, an outskirt of Ikorodu in Lagos, berated the bad state of their roads and the negligence of the area by the state government, with some even rhetorically asking if their community is on the map of Nigeria.
“No day passes by without people talking about the bad state of this road,” began Samuel Ikechukwu, a motorcycle rider who plies the route daily.
“We have complained to everyone involved and many promises have been made but as you can also see for yourself, the road has remained really terrible and is not good for road users; both for vehicle owners and people pedestrians.
“Our motorcycles get spoilt everyday and although we have had to increase our fares during this period, we have not made extra income because very few people move around on motorcycles for fear of being thrown into the ‘lagoon’,” the stout-looking young man murmured.
Cletus Onongia, another road user at Ita Oluwo area of the state, who spoke with our correspondent, noted angrily that: “we are always scared of rainfall here. Anytime it rains, everyone starts feeling as if the world is about to come to an end because of what becomes of our communities.
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I live and work here and it has been really difficult moving around since it started raining because everywhere gets really messy, clothes get dirty easily, and the flood moves into houses here as well.
“To be honest, the rainfall is always a curse to us here because we do not really have anything to enjoy when it rains. Or looking at it yourself, what benefit do you think one
can get from such a terrible situation as this which is being experienced here this period?”
Out of curiosity to get more people to comment on the situation in their areas when it rains, our correspondent moved to Ogijo, a part of Ogun state which shares a boundary with Ikorodu and the residents were no better than the ones interviewed earlier.
The first respondent was a woman who simply identified herself as Tosin. She noted that she had a car but would not dare put it on the road with the poor state of the road.
The civil servant with the Lagos state government, explained that the governor of Ogun state has to urgently do something about the deplorable state of the road as it keeps getting worse with the passing of each day.
“I cannot say more than you can see for yourself. This portion of the road, in front of Ogijo community high school, is about the most terrible part of the state that I have ever seen.
“I have been standing here for over an hour, trying to get a vehicle to take me to the other side but there seems to be no solution in sight, even the vehicles that are ready to go will charge you really outrageous prices. These are hard times for people of this area.
“Even when it doesn’t rain, things are bad here. So, you can only imagine how terrible this place becomes when the rain pours down in torrents,” she lamented.
Moving further towards Ita- Sanni, another part of the state where the road was extremely bad, Kunle Adeyemi, revealed that as a motorcyclist who resides in the area, “I change my spoket and chains almost every day. I do not make more than N2,000 daily, and the chains cost about N1, 500 while the spocket is about N350.
“How can one survive working here during this rainy season? There was even a time when people came around from the state government to survey the area and we were all happy that there might be respite after all. But what we have discovered afterwards is that they only came here to use that as a means of campaigning prior to the elections.
“Today, they have been returned to power and the road has been left in serious problems. The government should remember that they were voted into power by these same people who they now ignore. At times I even think we are not Nigerians”.
With all these lamentations, the state governors involved are expected to speed up actions as the people are already yearning for the dividends of democracy.
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