Lasun Alagbe
‘For decades, the state of the road made living in and visiting Aboru an experience in hell. It was more terrible than what Nollywood tries to capture in ‘Living in Bondage’. When the current government thus made the construction a priority and finished the job to time, it was like a dream in paradise for the Aboru folk.
Watchers of political goings-on in Lagos State, especially those who have soft spot for the All Progressives Congress, must be happy that Governor Akinwunmi Ambode and the party’s governorship candidate in the state, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, are getting bonded in concrete terms. The governor’s recent move, when he held a meeting with elders of the Epe Division and urged them to vote for Sanwo-Olu, is the highpoint of such efforts.
Ambode is from Epe; and the people there are particularly sad that he did not get second term. So, when he chose to appeal to them, saying they should forgive and forget, it is simply part of the reunification mechanism that the APC needs in the state.
But observers believe that it is not Epe alone that feels pained that Ambode is not coming back. Also touched are areas such as Aboru, Ojodu/Berger and Abule Egba. These are the places the Ambode government made major interventions that made the people really fell in love with him. But if there is any particular section of Lagos that the APC candidate should appease, it is the Aboru, in the Iyana Ipaja area.
Phenomenallagos gathered that many people in the area have yet to come to terms with the reality that Governor Akinwunmi Ambode is not opportune to contest the election, let alone come back. They see him as their liberator, having constructed the road that runs through the heart of the area, a jinx that governors before him could not break.
For decades, the state of the road made living in and visiting Aboru an experience in hell. It was more terrible than what Nollywood tries to capture in ‘Living in Bondage’. When the current government thus made the construction a priority and finished the job to time, it was like a dream in paradise for the Aboru folk.
The project was, indeed, an ambitious one. The road had to consume houses, cross rivers and marry other parts that include Command. So great it is that the inauguration was conducted like a carnival, with APC leader and Ambode’s (erstwhile?) godfather, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, savouring the fulfilment of the progress that his political family had continued to bring to Lagos.
It was an elated Jagaban, as the politician is also widely known, who declared, “Ambode has not disappointed me.”
Immediately, the fortune of the once derided Aboru changed. Landlords who had abandoned their houses glided back. Tenants found a new bride in the area, while more people began to acquire property there despite the fact prices of land and houses increased dramatically.
Of course, the larger Alimosho/Agege area has generally significantly benefited from the road development steam that drove the government especially in the first two years. Its legacies, here, include the construction of the Abule Egba overhead bridge, which smashed the traffic curse the zone had battled with for long; and the ongoing Pen Cinema Bridge which has the potential to liberate the area too. When the political colour of the APC in Lagos thus suddenly changed, one can only imagine how rudely shocked the people would be.
“When I heard that they have finally dropped Ambode, I felt very sad,” a landlord in Aboru, Yinusa Alade, says. “I was in Port Harcourt working on a project. It was as if a huge rock fell on me. Ambode has done very well for us in Aboru. It is as if he was sent to us by God.”
Another landlord in the area, a civil servant who speaks on condition of anonymity, explains that traditional rulers and many elders in Aboru, including politicians, took concrete efforts to reach Tinubu during the primaries crisis.
“If not because PDP ‘are not gathered’ (suggesting not reliable and serious), I would have said everybody should vote for them. What Tinubu did to us is very bad,” the resident notes.
Interestingly for the man who eventually emerged the governorship candidate, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the coast is very clear for him to attain the enviable height. Although many believe that, based on the factors that brought him out, he has cause to focus on the party establishment, he too has repeatedly said that his would be a government beneficial to all.
The team spirit that has also returned to the Tinubu political family is also one that is key. What Sanwo-Olu thus needs to do is to pay attention to areas that Ambode has hipnotised with projects while also reaching out to the elite and other grassroots arena his ‘predecessor’ would have failed to touch.
POST SCRIPT: Phenomenallagos learnt that a brother of the governor who resides in the area is also influential.
