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00:00 Welcome to another edition of Inside Stuff with me, Martins Olodja.
00:05 Today's topic is Southwest political leaders and federal roads.
00:12 And this is based on my experience in the last two weeks I've been traveling by road around Southwest.
00:18 I'm a stakeholder, I'm from Southwest, so I can comment on what I have seen and what I have not seen.
00:27 It's really a symbol of shame that we are suffering in Southwest because we do not have good roads.
00:38 Politicians are making noise, they are speaking too many languages, but language of development is not part of them.
00:49 Critical infrastructure that people actually need, just good roads to get around, good roads to get to the farms, good roads to transport farm products,
01:02 good roads just to move on, good roads to go for Christmas and even New Year celebrations, good roads.
01:11 So Southwest is a symbol of shame, despite sophistication that we talk about, despite the fact that 24 years ago we began this journey with a democracy through a retired general,
01:26 Olusegun Obasanjo, who was there for eight years.
01:30 And then again, we just ended eight years of another democracy with a Southwesterner as Works Minister, Baba Tunde Fashola.
01:43 And it's really very shameful that as I speak here, there is no good road from Lagos to Abeokuta.
01:55 There is no link road, good road, it's all federal roads from Abeokuta to Ibadan.
02:02 Yes, they said they have completed Lagos-Ibadan Expressway now, after so many years, after so many years.
02:12 But when you get to Ibadan, what do you do? Where do you go from there?
02:18 When you get to Ibadan, you still cannot rush to Oshobo, to even pass through Ibadan. It's a problem.
02:25 Oh, there is a railway from Lagos to Ibadan. When you get down from Ibadan, where do you go from there?
02:35 It's difficult to access Oshobo from Ibadan. So it is difficult to access Ekiti from Oshobo.
02:46 If you want to access Ekiti from Akure, it's difficult. You want to go from Ado-Ekiti, carved out of Akure.
02:55 Ado-Ekiti is the capital of Ekiti State, and Akure is the capital of Ondo State.
03:02 Ekiti State was carved out of Ondo State. There is no access road.
03:08 You can't rush through Ikere and some other routes there. We have had big, big governors, prominent governors,
03:17 but these governors, these former governors of some of the states, they have been part of the ruling party.
03:24 But nothing has happened, and it's really very shameful.
03:29 I travelled last weekend from Lagos to Ondo, and it's really very shameful. From Sagamu Interchange to Ijebude,
03:41 from Ijebude to Ondo area, in other words, Sagamu-Ore road is terrible.
03:54 The most shameful of it is Sagamu to Ijebude is really terrible.
04:00 This is the access of a former vice president, Professor Osibajo.
04:07 It's really curious to ask what happened in 80 years.
04:13 They released money, they got sukkuk, they did all sorts of things.
04:20 Vice president and western Nigerian politicians, what happened to them?
04:24 We had a vice president for 80 years, we had a work minister for 80 years from the same southwest,
04:31 yet not one federal road can be said to be completed in a way that will say,
04:40 "Look, from Lagos to Abeokuta, no good road. From Lagos to Ikorodu to Ijebude, failed road.
04:49 You can't get anywhere." What is the problem with democracy?
04:52 Do people in western Nigeria really need democracy?
04:56 That's the question, and the answer is blowing in the wind.
05:00 So where is the dividend of democracy that anyone can talk of in southwest in 24 years?
05:08 24 years of locusts, we can say.
05:12 The 24 years that locusts have eaten.
05:16 Locusts was there for 80 years as president of Nigeria.
05:19 He used to be an otter person from Otta to Abeokuta.
05:22 The road is the most terrible.
05:25 So how do we reconstruct, deconstruct democracy in the last 24 years in southwest?
05:33 So the box stops at the table of politicians and political leaders from southwest.
05:39 How do they do this? This is how they allocate values in the democracy.
05:44 Southwest leaders in House of Representatives or the Senate,
05:48 they normally come together to say, "These are the projects we would like the president or whoever to put in the budget."
05:58 How many meetings have they held?
06:02 How many requests have been thrown out or declined by a sitting president in the last 24 years
06:12 in all these federal roads in southwest I'm concerned with?
06:15 Because it was really stressful.
06:18 Traveling by road from Lagos to Akumba, Akoko, where I delivered a convocation lecture.
06:27 Even Abuja is not far from Lagos.
06:30 By the time you get to Akure, Abuja is very, very close.
06:35 You get to Kogi and there you are, but no road.
06:40 You want to fly, there is no flight.
06:42 Even one-way flight now is more than 200,000.
06:46 So if we have good roads, who would like to get to the airport?
06:50 We don't want to know where the airports are located.
06:52 But our leaders in southwest have been flying over all these bad roads.
06:58 It is terrible. It is shameful.
07:01 It is a blight on democracy.
07:04 We feel that it is pitiful that southwest political leaders need to answer some questions
07:12 on what they have brought to southwest in times of critical infrastructure,
07:15 road infrastructure in the last 24 years.
07:17 It is very shameful. We will continue with this discussion some other time
07:22 because it is critical that we need to ask them questions.
07:25 If you have any questions concerning this, you want to contribute to this, go to the comments section.
07:33 Let us share our listeners, our viewers' compliments of the season.
07:38 Until we meet again next week, it is bye for now from me, Martin Solonja.
07:43 [Music]