EKITI: Rehabilitation of township roads top priority in 2022 —Fayemi

Ekiti State  Governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi, has assured residents of the state on the determination of his administration to bring about meaningful development and boost the economy through rehabilitation and reconstruction of township roads in 2022.

Fayemi stated this, yesterday, during his monthly radio and television Programme, tagged: ‘Meet Your Governor’, saying he would continue to ensure adequate welfare of the people through meaningful projects and programmes.

The governor said the roads that would be urgently addressed are the Ado Ekiti–Iworoko road that was awarded during Governor Oni’s administration and was abandoned; the Omisanjana–Ajebamdele road; Odo-Ado axis, as well as Igirigiri road up to the Ado Local Government headquarters, saying his government was not oblivious of some of the challenges inside town and promised to address the roads before commencement of the rainy season next year.

Other roads already slated for rehabilitation according to the Governor, include Ilawe – Ikere; Iloro-Ijurin-Ayegunle-Temidire road; Ifaki-Esure-Eyio-Awo road; Itapa-Ijelu-Omu road adding that his administration was also cooperating with FERMA to address and ensure rehabilitation of federal roads.

The governor asserted that his administration has paid over N1 billion to pensioners to ameliorate their suffering as senior citizens, despite dearth of fund in the state, adding that his government is already looking for ways, through promissory note with financial institutions, to access funds to clear the backlog of gratuity but, for one reason or the other, the pensioners rejected the agreement.

Speaking further, the governor denied that the state collected bailout from the Federal Government to pay arrears of workers’ salaries. He said what the states got was a bridge finance to fill the hole that has been created by the deduction for the repayment of an earlier bailout.

Still speaking on roads and projects, he said:  “The one that is of major concern to most of Ekiti people is the Ado-Ikere-Akure road.

“That is one road that we’ve spent more time trying to address than any other road. The challenges that we are facing is due to the nature of our federal system.

“We got money to fix the road, the owner of the road refused, saying that we cannot fix the road, we transferred the money to them, they awarded the contract, there is a contractor on the road as we speak but they don’t have enough allocation from the Federal Government in the budget in order to accelerate the work.

“It’s a N30Billion contract, but if you check the 2021 budget, only one billion naira was put in it for that road.

“We’ve completed Ado-Iyin road, everybody is talking about Ado-Iyin, but we have done Agbado-Ode-Isinbode-Omuo, that is a 31km road; we have done Oye-Aiyede-Ikun-Kwara boundary road, that is a 41km road; we have done Ilupeju-Ire-Ijan-Igbemo, that is a 25km road, then we’ve done also Aramoko-Erinjiyan-Ikogosi, a 14km road, we’ve rehabilitated Ado-Ilawe-Igbara Odo-Ibuji, Ondo State boundary to serve as alternative to Ado-Ikere-Akure road so that the problem that we are encountering in Ikere-Akure road will be ameliorated,’’ he said.

Source: vanguard