The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Ondo State has urged Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa to prioritise the completion of ongoing and abandoned projects before initiating new ones.
The party’s Director of Media and Publicity, Leye Igbagbo, made this call in a statement issued on Tuesday, criticising the recent flag-off of a 10-kilometre road project linking Akure to Idanre. According to the PDP, the new project comes despite the abandonment of a similar road—Ijoka Road to Idanre.
While acknowledging that the new road project may appear people-oriented, Igbagbo described it as self-serving and questioned the rationale behind neglecting the Ijoka Road, which serves the same purpose.
In the statement titled “Complete Ijoka Road to Idanre If Your Administration Is Truly People-Oriented,” the PDP challenged Governor Aiyedatiwa to explain why the Ijoka Road project has been left unfinished while another road with a similar function is being flagged off.
“The governor should be kind enough to tell us why residents and users of the Ijoka Road axis continue to suffer daily, enduring hardship as they pass through the route,” Igbagbo said.
He expressed concern over what he described as a potential misapplication of billions of naira in taxpayer funds, arguing that a fraction of such funds could complete the Ijoka Road and other nearly abandoned projects across the state.
“If the need in the Idanre axis is indeed urgent—perhaps for political reasons—one would have expected the governor to commence construction on the Idanre-Ofosu road instead. That route would deliver greater economic value by linking the region to the Benin-Ore-Lagos expressway,” he said.
The party advised the governor to prioritise the welfare and security of citizens in his development agenda and warned against embarking on what it called “white elephant projects” driven by personal interest.
“We further counsel that all ongoing road projects initiated by his predecessor, the late Arakunrin Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, should be completed, rather than pursuing projects driven by personal aggrandisement but disguised as public interest,” the statement concluded.
