The Ojumele-Ajegunle road constructed by Still Earth Construction Ltd. in the Sagamu Local Government area of Ogun State has proven to be of a poor standard, as a portion of the road was eroded by a rainfall on Sunday, some weeks after the company, owned by Oyindamola Adeyemi, completed it.

Some other parts of the road have started peeling off. All these bring into question the quality of the work done by the contractor.

During a visit to the area on Monday, FIJ learned that the road was completed in March and made available for public use. The affected portion of the road is located some metres away from M. Ola-Oluwa Filling Station, which is located along GRA road.

After the rain subsided on Sunday, Ade Olayinka Akinsanya, the Ogun State Commissioner for Works, whose residence is not far from the area, inspected the damaged portion of the road.

On the road on Monday were some residents; Temitope Ogunnubi, the councillor representing Ward 11, Sagamu LGA, in the legislative house; and a government official who described himself as the project supervisor. The councillor described the project as the government’s “achievement” in the area and urged for an immediate repair.

Guardrails were fixed by the roadside, starting from the damaged section down to the canal beside a house named ‘Were Nise Oluwa’. According to the supervisor, these guardrails were not in the contract agreement the contractor signed with the government.

“I am telling you that if the commissioner sees these (guardrails), he is going to ask questions on why the contractor put them here,” the supervisor, whose name could not be ascertained, said in response to a complaint about the quality of the railings.

He further stated that the ministry would have to handle the corrective work because the contractor would not be willing to shoulder the responsibility.

A SHODDY JOB

Until 2024, Olumeje was a flood-prone part of Ogun State, sending residents away from their apartments and making life unbearable for many, including riders and drivers. Some house owners had to add two or three coaches of blocks on top of the gutter walls in front of their houses to fence them off from the erosion that usually engulfed the tiny drainage ways. A cloudy atmosphere was a dreadful sight to many of them because of the havoc that could follow.

The completion of the road a few weeks ago, however, appeared to have provided a new lease of life in the area. But some residents have questions to ask about the integrity of the road. Some said they had been proven right in their complaint to the contractor while on site that the work was not being done well.

Our reporter was present when a resident told Ogunnubi and the project supervisor that he and some residents had raised a complaint to the contractor that the project, particularly the affected area, was shoddy.

“They failed to listen to us when we tried to make them realise that their work was not going fine. We said we were the residents of this area and we knew that they needed to do a solid job here so as to make it last longer, but they said we were not in a position to tell them how to do their work. They told us they had done several works in the state and we had no authority to tell them how to go about the work. See what has happened now,” the black-complexioned man with a baritone said.

“When they were filling this side up, they did not compact it. They just poured red soil inside without using any machine to solidify it before laying asphalt on it. That was why storm water found it easy to wash it away.”

Abiodun Salami, a shop owner on the street, believed that the contractor did a bad job. He pointed out how the drainage from M. Ola-Oluwa junction was not linked to the one on the GRA road. From the junction, the drainage was not built to enable the free passage of water, he added.

FIJ obtained a land line available on Still Earth’s website on Tuesday. A lady, who identified as Harmony, said she would make her findings and call back in a few minutes. She had not done that as of press time.

Meanwhile, the government has said the erosion was due to the dumping of solid waste in the gutter.

“The reason for the damage was simply that the collector drainage for the storm water in the area was silted up due to indiscriminate refuse disposal, which made the water to overflow during the downpour of Sunday afternoon. In the same vein, a car wash owner ignorantly built a cover slab on the drain without adequate and proper engineering guidance and advice of expert, causing water not to flow properly into the drain during the heavy rain,” Kayode Akinmade, a special adviser to Governor Dapo Abiodun, said in a statement.