Ondo may not benefit from Lagos-Calabar Coastal highway – LP Candidate

The governorship candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in Ondo State, Chief Sola Ebiseeni, has expressed concern over the exclusion of the state from the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway being constructed by the Federal Government.

Ebiseeni, the Secretary General of the Pan Yoruba Socio-political group challenged Governor Aiyedatiwa to address the people of the state on the proper alignment of the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway in the state.

Pointedly, Ebiseeni said the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway by the Tinubu administration is the most visionary project for the people of the Niger Delta. However, he said the state portion of about 100 kilometres and the longest shoreline might not appropriately traverse the state coastal portion.

His words, “All efforts by leaders of thought from Ondo State, particularly the people of Ilaje Local Government, to ensure justice have proved abortive. The Governor has been indifferent.

“I suggested to him since May to call a meeting to brief our people for representations like other states and communities to the Federal Government on the proper and beneficial alignment of the palpable tension is all over the place.

“Our Governor is busy celebrating one Kilometre of the concrete walkway where a project that will enhance the establishment of a deep-sea port, coastal investments, redress the coastal erosion in Aiyetoro and other places, and impact our lives and civilization for good is being allowed to slip by. We need a Governor with the proper understanding and clout to make things work.”

Briefing reporters on the preparation of his party for the election, Ebiseni, a former Chairman of Ilaje-Ese-Odo Local Government and Commissioner, said the LP is a household name and has governed the state for eight years during the government of Dr Olusegun Mimiko.

According to him “Labour Party is a household political party in Ondo State and indeed the first political party with the grace of being elected twice for governorship from 2009 to 2017”

On why the party has not flagged off his campaign, Ebiseeni said “We are not in the business of crowd rentals or preaching to the disciples by hauling our members in buses to Akure and end up persuading the converted, we are meeting the people where they are and it easy to remind them and point to Labour Party projects in their localities.”

His words “They know that under the Labour Party government education was free up to secondary school level with the state government paying WAEC fees which the present government refused to pay resulting in monumental national embarrassment where WAEC had to withhold the results of children.

  “We are reminding them that in the state University and Polytechnic, by deliberate policy, tuition fees were pegged at twenty thousand Naira compared to the sum of two hundred thousand.

“Our Mega schools are speaking for us, and the students are not likely to forget that bursaries were last paid in 2016 at the end of the LP administration; parents will remember our free bus shuttles for pupils throughout the state and vote for us.

“Mothers won’t forget that their deliveries in our hospitals were free of charge compared with about 250 thousand today. Our first-class mother and child hospitals and other health facilities in every ward and rural community are the only medical outreaches seen in most parts of the state.

Since our departure none has been added to the modern markets we built in the crannies of the state, road infrastructures, the University of Medical Sciences, and other first-class facilities attached to it like the Trauma Centre and Gani Fawehinmi Diagnostic Centre all of which have become moribund in the hands neglected by the present administration are speaking for us.”