By Adekola Afolabi
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The landlords association of Bethel Estate, behind Oba-Ile Housing Estate extension in Akure North Local Government area of Ondo State has appealed to the state governor, Arakunrin Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, SAN, to come to their rescue by channelising Ala river extension which always floods the area.
Chairman of the community, Mr Olakunde Tolani Emmanuel, while sharing the ugly experience being faced by the residents of the area, equally begged the government to help sandfill a three-cell giant bridge just built by them which connects some streets together and provides access road in the community.
According to the chairman, the bridge which was constructed by the landlords in the area through community self-help effort, gulped about N10m.
He said the landlords decided to find a means of executing the project to complement government’s efforts since government alone cannot do everything.
The community, however, appealed to the government to help sandfill the access road and dredge the Ala river to prevent the bridge from being washed away by floods.
“We believe that government alone cannot do everything. That is why we took it upon ourselves and contributed and even borrowed to construct the three cells bridge to open up our community. Now, we are left with the filling of the access road and channelisation of the river.
“We do not have much again because we have expended all what we had to construct the bridge. We spent close to N10m on the bridge. The bridge was contributed by 30 landlords. So, we are pleading with our governor to come to our rescue and assist us so that we can put the bridge into use as soon as possible.
“We are in the rainy season and it is seriously affecting the bridge, we are unable to dredge it because we cannot use ordinary excavator, it has to be amphibian excavator which obviously we cannot afford and that is why we are soliciting for the help of the state government in this regard, either through the ministry of Environment or Works so that water will not wash away our sweat in the community.
“All the houses in this area are always flooded whenever it rains because of non channelisation of this extension of Ala river. This has been our challenge over the years. The last administration came to channelise it and it really assisted us then. The present administration led by Arakunrin Akeredolu is also doing the same thing by channelising Ala river but it has not got to our end here.
“We understand they have worked around Fiwasaye end of the river and we want them to reach us here too to alleviate our suffering. We have actually gone this far but we need government to assist us. We are always ready to support the government in any area to get this work done,” Emmanuel explained.
The Secretary of the community, Mr. Amodu Oluwarotimi, stressed that the community has exhausted its strength, hence they were appealing to government to come to their rescue to save the people from the danger of flood.
“We paid through our noses to build this bridge. We hired the services of qualified engineers to build it, but now we still need to fill the road because of the terrain to enable us put the road into use. We want government to help us channelise the river and fill the bridge so that flood will not erode the bridge we laboured to put in place”, the secretary appealed .
