Flyover Now, Regret Later: Ondo’s Wrong Priority at a Critical Moment
Flyover Now, Regret Later: Ondo’s Wrong Priority at a Critical Moment
“We Need Jobs, Not Flyovers” – APC Chieftain Challenges Ondo’s Infrastructure Priorities
The proposed Oba Adesida flyover is a photograph waiting to happen, a ribbon-cutting moment that will make for good headlines and short-lived applause. But beneath the concrete and ceremony, Akure will still choke, not from vehicular volume, but from the collapse of urban order and a failure to invest in the state’s economic future.
The real problem on Oba Adesida is not the number of cars. It is a market that has outgrown its boundaries. Oja Oba market has swallowed a six-lane artery, reducing it to a footpath of hawkers, makeshift stalls, and disorder. A flyover treats the symptom by lifting traffic above the chaos; it does nothing to restore urban order. History across Nigerian cities shows markets simply climb bridges when enforcement, planning, and alternatives for traders are absent. What Akure needs is disciplined urban management: structured trading zones, enforced boundaries, and viable relocation plans for traders, governance, not more concrete.
There is a deeper irony. While we plan a flyover to ease movement within the city, our economy is dying on the runway. Akure Airport, located closer to Nigeria’s commercial and political hubs than many, is an embarrassment when judged by affordability and frequency of flights. Instead of converting proximity to Lagos and Abuja into connectivity and opportunity, we have high fares that exclude investors and travelers. Many indigenes prefer to drive to Lagos rather than use their own airport. A flyover will not fix this.
Look at what Ogun State did, it turned proximity to Lagos into an economic weapon through connectivity, industrial hubs, and investor-friendly policy, and moved from low revenue to the top tier. Ondo, with a coastline from Araromi to Ode-Aye and rich agricultural resources, is poorer in thinking than in geography. One month of Lagos State internally generated revenue is roughly two years of Ondo’s a gap not closed by symbolic infrastructure.
The arithmetic of priorities is simple. A flyover generates a few hundred temporary construction jobs, industrial hubs create tens of thousands of permanent ones. The billions earmarked for a bridge could instead:
– Finance SME industrial clusters in Ilara-Mokin and other corridors with reliable power, access roads, and incentives.
– Equip technical colleges with world-class workshops to skill our youth.
– Tar fifty kilometres of rural roads to free up agricultural value chains.
– Subsidize Akure-Lagos airfares long enough to reset investor perceptions.
– Develop coastal and port linkages between Akure, Owo, and the shoreline from Araromi to Ode-Aye.
These are the pragmatic bridges between potential and prosperity, not the bridges we photograph, but the bridges that build jobs, attract investment, and change lives.
The digital traffic lights already installed at Cathedral Junction and key intersections demonstrate that infrastructure exists to manage traffic flows. What is missing is enforcement and the political will to govern the road. Build the flyover if you must, but not as a substitute for the policies that create sustainable employment and real connectivity.
Our youth are not protesting gridlock. They are protesting lack of opportunity. Idle young people create congestion of a different kind: they fill streets and markets because there is nowhere else to be. Employment is the best traffic management system. Invest in factories, ports, value chains, and skills and the city will organize itself around productive hours.
Ondo State faces a choice repeated by every generation of leadership, invest in what looks like development or invest in what actually is development. Too often we choose the former. The Oba Adesida flyover is not a bad project on its own; it is a bad priority for this moment with these constrained resources and these urgent needs.
We urge the state government to:
– Prioritise industrialisation, coastal connectivity, and airport reform over headline projects.
– Restore Oja Oba into a properly planned market with enforced boundaries and relocation options.
– Re-allocate part of proposed flyover funding into SME clusters, technical education, rural roads, and targeted airfare subsidies.
– Use existing traffic-management tools while committing to strict enforcement and urban planning.
If we act with courage and strategic thinking, Ondo can become a manufacturing and export hub, unlock its coastline, and give its youth livelihoods. If we continue to build monuments to motion, we will have photographs and regrets.
Signed,
Chief (Dr.) Alexander Oluremi Ajipe
APC Chieftain, Ondo State
