pannigeriannews 
Yinka ADETUNJI
The people of Ogbomoso can now heave a sigh of relief as the Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA) has begun the rehabilitation of the badly damaged spots on the Waska Caretaker – Ogbomoso High School stretch of the ever busy Ogbomoso-Oyo road.
The agency which moves to site Tuesday immediately began the repair process expectedly causing gridlock on the road. Reynolds Construction Company (RCC) is undertaking the project on behalf of the road maintenance agency.
OCYF with the xontrac
Three portions were particularly drivers’ nightmare because of their nature of damage; these are the Waska/Odokoto junction-Total area, Olopemarun area in front of Olopemarun Basic School and Idi-Oro area, in front of Uncle B Stationeries and Bookstores/Ogbomoso Baptist High School junction.
These three portions were riddled with deep craters, which were a cause for slow driving, damages to vehicles’ underbellies, dangerous driving characterized by lunging, roiling articulated vehicles (trailers), traffic jams and crashes. They are the reason many smaller vehicles take detours through other intra-city roads.
“It is nightmare driving through that road, I always dread the experience. One may take 30 minutes at times to travel a distance that does not exceed three kilometres. One is taken up by fear because of the rocking, swerving trailers. Government should help us by fixing the road,” a road user told ogbomosoinsightonline.com last week.
This repair effort by FERMA has consequently been receiving accolades; Ogbomoso Community Youth Forum (OCYF), in a statement signed by its president, Rev’d Peter Olaleye, secretary, Adeniji Idowu and PRO Adeniran Adebayo,, and made available to ogbomosoinsightonline.com on Wednesday, heaped encomiums on the Federal Government for the FERMA intervention, recalling how it galvanised communal efforts in 2021 to fix the road.
Local governments’ chairmen in Ogbomoso zone, park managers and allied road transport workers and some well-meaning individuals were mobilised by OCYF to supply granites, stones and sands to fill the cratered portions.
“Local governments released excavators, transport workers made tipping vehicles available, we had those who gave us stones and other materials to fill the gullies; we evacuated wastes clogging drainages, many people contributed and it brought temporary relief. The coming of rain this year made the portions impassable once again.
“This ongoing intervention by FERMA therefore is a welcome development and we believe it will bring permanent solution to our ordeal. We are assured quality and not shoddy job will be executed by the federal road agency. We are grateful to the Federal Government, we are grateful to FERMA, whose officials we have met and discussed with and had assured us of quality work,” OCYF states.
It is recalled that while members of the youth organization were spearheading the revamp work last year some soldiers traveling through the area jumped out of their buses in some sort of mad rage to beat the youths believing they were causing obstructions on the road, allegedly killing a man on motorcycle in the process by hitting him on the head with gun butt.
A typical gridlock in Ogbomoso metropolis occasioned by bad road or trailer accident
Protests by the youths to the authorities of the Nigerian Army to fish out the perpetrators yielded no positive result.
Ogbomosinsight
