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Every trip through the Mobalufon Junction, Ijebu Ode, on the Sagamu-Benin Expressway, arouses agonising nostalgia on what one had witnessed and heard about the notoriety of that route. The situation was no different when one had cause to drive past recently.
Indeed, until recently, the Grim Reaper didn’t lurk in the shadows of the chaotic life at Mobalufon Junction waiting patiently for its next prey, no; it sashayed openly, brows furrowed in virulence, and perpetually famished and fuming like a starved greyhound. Fatal accidents were a routine. Hardly did a day pass without one or more being recorded. Promising and prominent lives were eclipsed within split seconds at all time of the day. And that was the case for as long as regular travellers and residents of the area could recall.
Worried about the carnage at Mobalufon, the first civilian governor of Ogun State, late Chief Olabisi Onabanjo, recommended that an overhead bridge be constructed to stem the tide. The then Ogun State House of Assembly also passed a resolution recommending that an overhead bridge be constructed to check the loss of lives there. Alas, Onabanjo’s government was truncated by the December 31st, 1983 military putsch that ushered in the regime of Major General Muhammad Buhari. And the death statistics continued to rise to stratospheric levels while successive administrations, even that headed by an acclaimed engineer, watched helplessly until Senator Ibikunle Amosun emerged as governor in 2011.
Humane and proactive, unarguably, Amosun knew that there was a way out of the avoidable Mobalufon bloodshed. But when he announced his plans, not a few sniggered and sneered in disbelief; the long-suffering people were used to barefacedly hypocritical politicians. Amosun, however, proved to be of a different hue altogether. By 2014, the Mobalufon Flyover became a reality. Since then, the death toll has plummeted considerably. You can count on your fingers the number of accidents, if any, that has occurred around the hitherto dreaded intersection, thanks to a thinking and thoughtful governor.
Though he built many other contentious bridges across the state, no rational mortal can question the relevance and timeliness of that of Mobalufon. In a dated interview, Amosun, while faulting critics of his administration’s focus on the construction of bridges and flyovers in the state, said, “I heard some people saying why is he doing all these bridges? They don’t know that we are looking beyond now, we are looking even to the next 50 years.” That may be for the other bridges. For Mobalufon, it is about avoiding existential tragedies.
Amosun’s second term in office as governor lapsed May 29, 2019, and he has since moved on to the Senate but there have been understandable attempts to distort some of his legacies. That is not for this writer to worry about. Political and image laundering imputations aside, the essence of this article, therefore, is to serve as a constant and indubitable reminder of one man’s single-minded and selfless commitment to rewriting the unwholesome narrative of that area and saving the lives of Nigerians!
