Roads: The 8.8Billion Naira trip...into the unknown ?

The road projects included the rehabilitation/asphalt overlay of Ilesha Expressway junction – Oyemekun/Adesida – Fiwasaye junction and the dualisation of Mobil Junction – Oba Ile – Airport Junction in Akure.
Others are the dualisation of Itanla junction –Ademulegun Roundabout – Surulere – Yaba – Akure Garage within the Ondo township.
Mimiko on the occasion presented a 30 per cent mobilisation fee of N2.3bn to the contractors that would handle the road projects.

.
Governor Mimiko's Ondo state goverment is splashing the cash - to use that popular football phrase, already.
 
 
There goes the roads, in Akure - the state capital, and Ondo town, to be fixed with nearly 9Billion Naira as reported in full here
 
The governor...
 

... urged the contractors to ensure a timely completion of the projects which he said would be inaugurated in the next 24 months.rnor urged the contractors to ensure a timely completion of the projects which he said would be inaugurated in the next 24 months.

 
I am not so sure whether this is shoddy reporting, or it is a case of a governor  spending some whooping =N=9 Billion without having any specific idea,
perhaps not properly communicating, exactly when the roads are finished ? Either way, worrying that, is the least you could say.
 
Still, that these roads are critical to the ease or otherwise of people's lives needs no stating.
 
What is disappointing, is the inability of the government over the last 10 years or so to evolve a deeper, well thought out, and well founded plan -
one that ensures new roads are constructed, while keeping existing ones permanently maintained.
 
It is the reason why the award of these multiBillion Naira contracts takes headlines in our climes. This should not be news. Ideally.
 
In the meantime,  there is no talk of the bitumen desposits in the state anymore lately. you wonder why...

Posted via email from allondostate's posterous

Shock Horror. Another Carnage. Another Loss.

... the accident occurred when a truck with the registration number XW 969 APP, which was coming from Ore end of the road collided with an 18-seater bus with registration number XK 444 AKR, which was said to have loaded from Akure town and was heading towards Lagos.

The driver of the bus was reported to have overtook other vehicles which were moving on the same lane with it, before it swerved to the other lane where the truck which was loaded with building materials was coming from and had a head-on collision with it in the process.

Full report here

Shock Horror.

So much pain in the midst of so much boundless promise.

The stuff that makes you lose your faith...

Another loss of many unsung heroes - father, son, brother, sister or friends to someone.

We are in dire need of a total overhaul of our roads, transport systems and attitudes, but 

where do we start ? when we don't even have a president, and governance is practically extinct ? scary stuff!

Posted via email from allondostate's posterous

Akure: A tourist's viewpoint.

Compared to the locales I spent time in at Ibadan, Akure looked strikingly well laid out...The pedestrians, the vehicles and everything moving carried on in a charming slow motion. I fell in love with the place immediately. The main Oba Adeshida road, which divides the Oja Oba (King’s Market), looked crowded but unruffled, a feature I found also soothing.

That was Pelu Awofeso's simple take on Akure, published here

Mrs. Mimiko: Taking Centerstage ?

"...Mrs. Mimiko noted that the resolve of the government was to develop all parts of the state,

its resource and people stressing that it would be incomplete to talk of the development

of the state without special consideration for the female population."

Full report here. 

There can be no excuses! 

The moment   the-wife-of-the-governor  begins to speak on behalf of the government, you are given 

the opportunity to  make dangerous presumptions on the ideologies - the mindset and all - that 

are the driving force at the government highest levels. 

We have been through that road before...

Posted via email from dapxin's posterous

CUG + Helmets: The road to 12…

 

…the move was part of efforts at using Information Technology to deliver the 12-point agenda of government.

There goes governor Mimiko in this report

First, it is quite interesting that the Ondo state governor has **not** quite forgotten his 12 point agenda.

That is actually refreshing. Maybe it is a sign that this governor does take a peek at all of that promise, once every while.  That can only be a good thing.

As for the CUG network,  5000 of it for staff of the state government ?  Good Idea on the face value but at what cost ?

We don’t know. We might never know. 

You also wonder how the selection process – who gets onto the lucky-5000-game - will work. 

Will this not ultimately turn the ministries into some lobbying Bazaar for a ticket ?

Also, there are no visible detail on how this exactly benefits the civil service. 

There are no specifics on how it improves the delivery of government services.

It all seems another quantum leap, in window dressing… time will tell.

Helmets:

It equally presented 1,000 safety helmets for the operators of commercial motorcycles, popularly known as Okada riders.

Again, the  Ondo state government appears not capable of stepping up its thinking from level one, populism.

In principle, good vision. But, what does the distribution of  helmets achieve in the long term safety index for the drivers ?

What are the costs of these helmets ?

What about the remaining Okada drivers ? Do they, therefore not become hazards to other drivers without big-daddy-governor’s helmets ?

It may take these things to be seen as better than an Agagu. But it is hard to see how this makes a good, let alone a great governor.

One would expect a greater feel of deep-thinking, from the Ondo state government, should it seriously be thinking of helping or securing Okada drivers.

There is a way your mind rings, when you are being kidded…

Ondo state: The colours of a Logo….

Two weekend ago, the entire  Ondo state treated itself to some serious party.

Well, it was not like the everyday people on the street was involved in some spectacular way.

It seems to be a glittering collection of  the who-and-whos of the state - to put it the way OSRC likes to headline this kind of stuff back the days invited together, with Olu Maintain music, and supporting cast to treat themselves.

It was supposedly about a new identity – whatever that means.

In reality, it was about this logo this logo. 

Yeah, you heard that right!

So much partying for the design of a simple mix of colours on Photoshop.  It is a creative  job that would take 5 minutes. Hardly worth fussing about.

In attendance, scores of mega-men and their wives who has dominated the state, but hardly defined the state.

Granted, there has not been too much reason for excitement in a state flowing with embedded riches with the state just recently surviving the logo of the PDP in the frightening colours  of Olusegun Agagu – a catalogue of intellectual accident and gross waste.

So, for  a  new labour party to organise a get-together is not entirely a wrong thing in itself. 

What is new and disappointing  is the premise. And all that goes into such premise, in terms of cost in the Nigerian namespace. We will never know. 

Or put in a different way, we might get to know, only when we do not remember even the colours of the logo. But make no mistake about it, lots of useful funds would have gone in different colours into the jamboree.

There are no accessible policy paper, or visible directions, heck! parties on transforming, if not championing the rebirth of the derelict state of education in the state.  You paint that colourless.

In the long-winded manifesto of the government, there was a 12 bullet point agenda that has no colours in this logo. As of yet.

We might have another party for that, maybe sometime…. Colour that patience.

Ondo state has in its deep underbellies, some of the most potent belts for massive agriculture .

How this government intends to translate such richness of blessing to visible colours of commerce, mass food production, and guarantee is , at best, an exercise in mind reading. That is, no one knows.

But everyone expects. That is the colour of ondo state’s logo in the mind.

The governor is a medical doctor. It takes a lot of imagination and vision but would it not be befitting, if he was able to lead the state in the rejuvenation of her healthcare systems , perhaps with an all too needed plan to create a world-class teaching hospital ?  stuff of dreams….

But if you have any idea how a specialist hospital is organised – and the governor should have some idea – then you would see  colours that is needed for the logo of the Ondo state specialist hospital. It won’t merit a party.

The most depressing bit of the logo jamboree, was the statements credited to the former governors of the state as reported here.

One of the state’s ex-rulers – you can’t really be hard, he is one of those khaki men – apparently forgot what it was all about. He thought it was his birthday.

Hear Olukoya:

‘‘Mimiko has got it right, Ondo State has got it right and I am wondering whether today is my birthday’’.

It is a disgrace. But we have gone past that now.

The Sun, reports Mimiko saying the colours stood for vibrancy, brightness and progress.

It would appear his government needed some bright, and perhaps brave men, to remind him, it is no election time no more.

But it will be elections time soon.

And the colours of the logo  then, he would not be defining.

He would be on trial for the real colours of Ondo state, the logo of which  are in people’s minds. Not graphics designers!

Gani Fawehinmi 1938 - 2009

 

It is an impossible job to attempt to begin to piece together, what may capture the essence of this man – Gani Fawenhimi, (SAN).

He was a great man. From the deep covers of Ondo state, Gani will never be forgotten.

 

Gani the great...
The lone voice,
and unshaken fountain of hope,
and a true generational icon,
of what the law,
should mean,
could mean,
and meant,
to the entire continent.....
You live on!
For should we
ever find the grace to make it - as a continent, and as a race,
we will find it in us,
to remember you! always! forever!.

 

What a loss. A colossal deficit!