Governor Dapo Abiodun of Ogun State has revealed that Ogun and Lagos States may soon take over the reconstruction of the Lagos-Sango Ota-Abeokuta expressway and return toll gates in order to bring succour to motorists, travelers and residents on the long corridor.
Governor Abiodun disclosed this yesterday in Abeokuta at his investitures as the honorary Patron of the Abeokuta Club during the 2019 induction of 30 new members into the Club.
He said he and Governor Jide Sanwo – Olu of Lagos State had written to President Muhammadu Buhari on the issue and that the President saw the propriety of their request.
He said the planned joint takeover of the expressway was part of his strategies to develop infrastructure in Ogun. “You cannot expect people to come to our state if they can’t move around with ease or they can’t even begin to move from Ogun State and get to other state,” he said.
He said further: “We all know that the Lagos-Ibadan expressway is ongoing and the truth is that the road won’t be completed until December of next year.
“However, as a government, we have done a lot of road count and have come with the fact that if that road is completed, it does not have the capacity to transport the population of people that pass through that corridor.
“Consequently, I met with my counterpart, Sanwo-Olu and we decided that as a matter of urgency we need to take over some road, which includes Epe-Ijebu road, Ikorodu- Sagamu road and Lagos-Ota Abeokuta road so as to reduce the population of the people passing the Lagos-Ibadan expressway.
“I and Sanwo-Olu met with the President to hand over those three roads to us, we sat down with the President and explain things to us. He told us to put it in writing, we wrote a joint letter which have our two logos on that letter, we both signed it and I personally hand it over to Mr President few weeks ago, asking the President to hand over the road to us.
“The Lagos-Ota Abeokuta was signed in 2001 and today there is a debt of about 26 billion hanging on that road, the servicing of that road is exceeding 1 billion every year and that road would never be completed by this government and it is because of the pulse of fund at the federal level.
“What we intend to do is to commercialise this road and turn it to a private-public-partnership and we have people that are awaiting to enter a PPP with us so that they will fund the road, they will toll it and this would allow the people to move from Lagos to Abeokuta with ease. It will open Ogun for further development.”