Huge concern as LASG ignores bad road beside State High Court
A portion of the road adjacent the Lagos State High Court, located on Oba Akinjobi Street, opposite the Police College in G.R.A. Ikeja, is in a pretty bad shape.
It is riddled with large potholes, made worse by a lack of drainage system.
Commuters who enjoy the relatively good roads in G.R.A usually have unpleasant tales when their vehicles have to make a short trip on the portion of the road.
Judges attached to the court, which houses the main administrative offices including the Chambers of the Chief Judge of Lagos State, also pass the road daily as they go in and out of the premises. Some top executive officials, Newsroom gathers, live in the area, thereby making it unavoidable to escape the very bad road.
When Newsroom‘s correspondents visited the road on Saturday, scores of tricycle riders and private car owners were seen trying their best to avoid the worse portion of the road. The road was very dry, as it hadn’t rained in days. So the large potholes were very visible.
It is quite puzzling that in the area, only the portion of the road adjacent to the court is in a deplorable state. From the exit gate of the court, inwards the street, the road is free of any pothole, but also without drainage.
The state of the road is worse when it rains, we gathered, particularly for drivers who are not very familiar with the large potholes. Many of the commuters have wondered why the small portion, directly beside the State High Court and the Lagos State Judiciary Special Offences Court, has been left unattended to by the state government.
We, however, gathered that the road gets repair works done on it frequently – it has been worked on sometime this year, and a few other times last year.
“They sometimes come to grade it and pour asphalt on it, but it doesn’t last,” a man, who displayed his electronic products on the walkway just beside the court on Saturday, told us.
Newsroom learnt that the Lagos State Water Corporation on Oba Akinjobi Way, which is adjacent the court, also adds to the problem of flooding on the road, as it occasionally releases water which spills over to the bad portion of the road.
Governor Ambode had, upon the announcement of the N1.046 trillion state budget for 2018, reaffirmed his commitment to the rehabilitation, upgrading and maintenance of a network of roads across the city.
For some reason, however, an effective repair has not been carried out on a small portion of the road beside the State High Court, despite recent rehabilitation works on roads across the state. Perhaps, an indication that there is discord between the judiciary and the executive.
Recently Prince Dele Oloke, the Ikeja Chapter chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association was quoted in Guardian Newspaper lamenting the unrealistic expectations from a few number of judges in the state due to the challenges they face daily.
“Lagos state alone has more than 50 million residents. We have up to 70 judges in the courtrooms and when a judge has more than 800 cases in his or her docket and sits on an average of about 20 to 50 cases in a day – they are humans like us and also have their health, family challenges and societal expectations, how far do you think they can go?,” he said.
Efforts by Newsroom to the reach the office of the Lagos State Ministry of Works and Infrastructure for comments have so far proved abortive, as email enquiries sent to them were not responded to at the time of filing this report.
