KIRIKIRI TOWN RESIDENTS PROTEST AGAINST BAD ROAD CAUSING DEATH IN THE COMMUNITY
Recently, protesting residents, including women and youths, carried placards with different inscriptions indicating the bad state of the road and adjoining streets.
One of the protesting residents identified as Mr Fabian Makanju said that the gridlock caused by the bad roads within the Kirikiri community had led to the death of many residents.
For instance, he said a recent fire incident at the foot of the exit point of Kirikiri town which was caused by bad roads, and led to the fall of a petroleum-laden tanker that eventually sparked off a fire that consumed many property and lives, is an indication that order needs to be restored in the town.
In that incident alone, a resident of the community in pursuit of his daily bread was killed and several other residents had their cars trapped and reduced to ashes by the fire.
Another resident lamented that truck owners now block the roads to the detriment of other residents and business concerns in the community.
For instance, he said schools inside Kirikiri town and Comfort Oboh areas whose pupil and students are residing outside the area can no longer attend school, and if they do they are held up in traffic for several hours due to container trucks that have blocked the roads.
A school owner who spoke on condition of anonymity expressed bitterness that even the security agencies that were deployed to the area to control traffic and ensure sanity have joined in the melee and are making huge sum out of the truck drivers rather than create access for the residents to go out and come in.
The school proprietor lamented that the gridlock has depleted the population of the school, saying “take a look round, this is a primary school and this is 11:00a.m and these are just the few children who can make it to school today because two of our buses are still stuck in traffic.”
One of the protesting residents who was identified as Catherine Chidozie said: “This protest is long overdue. Some of our children can no longer go to school; the ones that go to school struggle to get there because their school buses no longer ply the routes due to the state of affairs in the area.
“We are suffering. About some months ago, a young boy lost his life. He had been sick and became unconscious, so his family decided to take him to Hilton Hospital in the Berger area. They were on the way when they ran into a gridlock caused by bad road. The boy died in the car.
“We want the road to be fixed. We want the trucks plying this road to be diverted to another route because they cause gridlock. Sometimes, we pass under the trucks to enter our houses. We want all these to stop.”
The story of people dying as a result of the massive gridlock, according to residents, is just one pathetic story out of many others.
One of them was that of a pregnant woman who was to deliver a baby and was being transported to the hospital she was using which was located outside the area.
She and her husband were held up in traffic for hours, as the container-laden trucks have blocked the entire space and vehicle coming in and out of the Comfort Oboh area could not have access.
Witnesses who told the story said that the woman decided to enter a nearby hospital and within five minutes of getting into the hospital, she gave birth to a baby boy.
The witnesses said, it could have been disastrous if she had continued to wait in the traffic as she and the unborn child would have been at risk,
Another resident, Mrs Josephine Gbadamosi, lamented over the untold hardship residents have to contend with living on the street.
“The condition of this road has become worse of late to the point that we sometimes contribute money to get sand to fill the bad portions. The shop owners around here have been the ones donating money to buy materials to fill the ditches, just to make the road passable because the state government has not done a thing here for years. Sometimes I even wonder if we have one. Each shop owner pays as much as N40,000, just to fill the potholes and clear the gutters. Because the gutters are not in good condition. I have fallen into this dirty water on so many occasions while on a bike,” she said.
The payment of fixing the road all by themselves is just because they wanted comfort even as they do not want the continuous death as a result of bad roads.
Peak News 