The Ogun State governor, Dapo Abiodun, has said motorists plying the Ikorodu-Ogijo-Sagamu, Epe-Ijebu-Ode and the Lagos-Ota-Abeokua roads would now pay tolls, adding that himself and his Lagos State counterpart, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, had agreed to commercialise the three federal roads in order to make their maintenance an easy task.
Abiodun said his government in collaboration with Lagos was planning to engage in Public-Private Partnership in the construction and rehabilitation of the three roads.
The governor, who disclosed this at the weekend when addressing members of Abeokuta Club during his investiture as Honorary Patron, said Sanwo-Olu and himself had met and agreed to commercialise the roads by allowing the private investors fund and toll the roads so as to ease transportation of people from Lagos to Abeokuta.
Abiodun further disclosed that N26 billion debt is hanging on the state government’s neck over the construction of the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway since the contract was signed in 2001. Abiodun explained that the government is expected to pay over N1 billion every year to service the debt incurred on the road.
“I met with my counterpart, Sanwo-Olu and we decided that as a matter of urgency, we need to take over some roads which include Epe-Ijebu road, Ikorodu-Sagamu road and Lagos-Ota-Abeokuta road to reduce the population of the people passing the Lagos-Ibadan expressway.
“Together, we met with the president to hand over the three roads to us. We sat down with the president and explained things to him. He told us to put it in writing; we wrote a joint letter, which has our two logos on it; we both signed it and I personally handed it over to Mr. President, and a few weeks ago, the president handed over the roads to us.
“You cannot expect people to come to our state if they can’t move around with ease or move from Ogun to other states. 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, reason why on our own, we are embarking on the three critical routes.”
