Ogun: Bad roads and paid amnesia, by Bamidele Johnson

There is something deeply unsettling about watching a resident of Ijoko, especially one who brands himself a crusader for good roads, pour lavish praise on Ibikunle Amosun, a former governor of Ogun State. It is not merely odd. It is grotesque.

It resembles the moral confusion of applauding someone who inflicted grievous harm on you and your household and never once showed remorse. That is precisely what is happening. This is a man who documents the devastation of Ogun State roads for content, yet somehow finds it convenient to celebrate the administration most responsible for the ruin of his own axis.

Ijoko, for anyone unfamiliar with the area, sits atop some of the worst roads imaginable. Their condition did not occur by accident. A substantial part of the damage can be traced directly to the ill-conceived six-lane highway project running from Alagbole through Agbado and Lambe to Ijoko. That project was initiated under Amosun and abandoned at roughly eight per cent completion. Five bridges were started where two would have sufficed. None was completed. The result was chaos, erosion, long-term structural damage to the entire corridor and grossly reduced livability.

Yet when this man began his so called advocacy for good roads, Amosun vanished from the story. So did every other governor before the current one. All blame was neatly deposited at the feet of Dapo Abiodun, who certainly deserves criticism. He moved too slowly and allowed public frustration to fester before responding. That much is undeniable. It is also undeniable that his government is building many roads. But there are concerns, valid ones, about the quality of the roads he is building.

What is dishonest is the implication that the roads the campaigner, hiding under Jesus and Zion Church, Ijoko, now parades as evidence were once functional and later ruined. Many, if not most, of them were never good. They were never constructed at any point, including during the tenure of the man he now fellates. These roads did not deteriorate. They were born defective.

What we are witnessing, then, is not activism but selective outrage. A man sheltering behind a church, launching a transactional agenda through moral posturing, while suffering a convenient loss of memory about who actually presided over the original destruction.

Amosun governed Ogun State. He left lasting wreckage along that axis. The scale of the damage was enormous. I know this because I lived in Lambe. I did not study the place from videos or hashtags. I experienced it daily.

From the beginning, something about this campaign felt off. The guy looked a bonafide shill. His enthusiasm lacked honesty. His silences were too deliberate. Now the extravagant praise for Amosun has removed any remaining doubt that what he is doing carries a strong whiff of paid amnesia. It is not principled advocacy.
Can a woman genuinely celebrate the man who violated her? That is how warped this performance is.