By Bamidele Temitope Johnson
Good thing the road between Iju and Oke Aro is being worked on by the Ogun State, the first time since it was built in the late 90s by the government of Buba Marwa, the ex-Lagos Milad after whom it was named. No one calls the road by that name, though. Small beer. More important is that 90 per cent of the road is in Ogun State, which is a conveyor belt of ogre-governors.
Yesterday evening was my first time of being there since work started. The road has been closed off at Taju Bello which, for those unfamiliar with the place, is less than a tenth of the distance. The alternative route is through a place called Abule. I was going to Matogun for the service of songs for my uncle’s wife. Matogun, at the best of times, is Golgotha for vehicles and their owners. I left my car and went by Keke (tricycle)
The roads through Abule make those in bombed out Gaza look like skating rinks. No hyperbole. The tricycle rider didn’t act like the roads, narrow things, were grotesque. He rode with the abandon of a Moto GP rider, zigzagging like he was fleeing gunfire, smashing our bodies into the metal and almost leaving the three passengers dizzy. I puffed out my cheeks in relief at Oke Aro, where I was to proceed to Matogun. The road is way more frightening than the ones in Abule. It is legit an extreme sports facility; a dead ringer for the most treacherous parts of the Paris-Dakar Rally route. In some parts, it is craggy like the surface of the moon. In others, it looks like a site at which a combo of rivers has deposited a huge volume of silt.
There was no Keke at Oke Aro, so I and the party travelling with me had to get on a Korope driven by an old woman. I knew that road well, having lived in the hood for a while. It was a dog’s dinner back then. These days, it’s the road to Sheol. The Korope, of course, had no absorbers and was oven-hot. It moved so slowly and despite that bodies smashed into the metal. I was particularly unlucky that, with my long legs, I was in the back seat. I was like chicken on the rotisserie, made to look more so by the heat that left my face glistening.
“Orun apaadi ni Matogun,” I told my cousin. Matogun is the biblical hell was what I said. He didn’t disagree. I doubt if anyone who has been there can. Life expectancy, I also said, must have plummeted to 20. It’s frightening. I returned through Lambe, my former hood. As neglected as it is, its roads, at least the ones I used yesterday, were nirvana compared to Matogun. I asked a tricycle rider if he still has blood, joking that those roads must caused a sharp dip in his PCV. He laughed and said he still does. To still have blood, I replied, he must be taking 50 litres of blood tonic per day. No more. No less. Just dance to fuji garbage. He laughed louder. Takes some grit to laugh in hell or its suburb. Real grit.
I wish a law could be made to have the governors of Ogun State spend two weeks yearly in Matogun or similar places to soak up what’s gwan. Would be chuffed to bits to see others states adopt the same law. Never gonna happen. In the meantime, thanks to the Ogun State government for the little it has started doing there and at Alagbole and Ajuwon. It’s coming late, though and it is still the tip of a very large iceberg. It is better late than never.
… Johnson, a journalist wrote from Lagos.
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