Arepo Residents Congratulate Dapo Abiodun
Arepo Central Community Development Association, (ACCDA) an umbrella development group comprising no fewer than twenty estates and communities in Arepo, has congratulated the new Governor of Ogun state His Excellency, Prince Dapo Abiodun and his deputy Engr. Mrs. Noimot Salako-Oyedele as they assumed the mantle of leadership of the Gateway State praying that their administration and tenure in office will surely usher Ogun state into its Greater Greatness.
The association, in a statement signed by its President, Prince Kehinde Adeyemo stated that the election of the duo as the new helmsmen of the state was a positive development and a big relief to the communities and citizens in the state who have in the last eight years suffered lack of inclusive governance and poor infrastructural development.
Specifically, the ACCDA commended Governor Dapo Abiodun on his victory despite huge opposition but reminded him not to forget his electoral promises which center on transparency, development, inclusiveness and good governance stating that all of these are much desired to fast-pace growth and development of the entire state rather than an “arrogant concentration of infrastructure in one region” of the state.
The ACCDA president recalls the plight of Ogun state border communities like Arepo, disclosing that the only access road that links the community to Lagos-Ibadan Expressway has completely collapsed and unmotorable having being abandoned for over eight years and remains a death trap. Although the road was said to have been awarded since 2006 to First August Construction Company during the first term tenure of former Governor Ibikunle Amosun, there has been no efforts to mobilise the contractor to move to site while the former governor turned deaf ears to all pleas by the Arepo community.
Prince Kehinde Adeyemo further disclosed that although residents in Arepo community have made several efforts, levying themselves and making monetary contributions to fix the road, yet not much has been achieved as the road requires government attention with wholistic reconstruction.
The road was built by former Governor Gbenga Daniel fifteen years ago and has since gone into disrepair. The association president lamented that Arepo Community which boasts of Journalists Estate, the first of its kind in Africa and the whole of the world has rather than attract the attention and care of the state government been carelessly and recklessly abandoned by an unlistening governor.
Not only that, Arepo community is the foremost border town, and an emerging town boasting of highly urbanized estates, communities and populated by high-flying and upwardly mobile elites and middle-class citizens who are contributing in no small ways to the growth and development of the state economy.
The only governance presence recorded by the community under the last dispensation was the rehabilitation of a six classrooms of the only community primary school in the town while the health center, police station and pipe-born water promised by the former governor remained a pipe dream.
However, the ACCDA has appealed to Gov. Dapo Abiodun and his new team to write their names in gold by urgently directing immediate reconstruction of the road as awarded while giving the community a fresh breather by providing other social amenities and infrastructure befitting of a fast growing border community which holds high potentials for the state in curbing rural-urban migration and other economic benefits.
