NIGERIA returned to civil rule in 1999 after decades of military dictatorship, but democracy didn’t always bring dividends. Ask the long-suffering people of Ewekoro, Ogun State, who for years watched their businesses ruined and many lives lost on the 70-kilometer Abeokuta-Ifo-Ota-Lagos Expressway. Governors came and promises were made, but the people saw no action on the road. Until recently, that is, when the current governor, Prince Dapo Abiodun, dared the odds and persuaded a hitherto unbending Federal Government to let him reconstruct the road, a federal edifice, for the benefit of the long-suffering populace. And so when, on Friday, the Governor flagged off the construction of the road with a pledge to complete it in 18 months, his pronouncement was greeted with roaring applause.
Adjudged as the second busiest road in Nigeria, the road, as Governor Abiodun himself noted on the occasion, connects Abeokuta and its hinterlands to Lagos State, and links Ilaro in Ogun West to…