Newly Inaugurated Osun 672-metre, Five-span Lameco Flyover Threatening to Collapse

Yinka Kolawole in Osogbo 

Barely 23 days after Governor Ademola Adeleke inaugurated the 672-meter flyover at the Lameco area of Osogbo, a section of the bridge has sunk. 

It would be recalled that construction which started in October 2023 purportedly completed July 2026 as the cost was put at a jaw-dropping figure of about N20 billion.

Osun stakeholders noted that the Olubadan of Ibadan, Oba Rasheed Adewolu Ladoja scheduled to inaugurate the project by the Adeleke administration perhaps saw this ugly development ahead. The former governor of Oyo State now a revered monarch, without no prior notification boycotted the inauguration ceremony.

When THISDAY visited the area, portion of the bridge subsided in the early hours of Friday after heavy rain fall in Osogbo, the Osun State capital. 

The noticeable depression on the bridge raised concerns among motorists and residents as they took alternative routes. Commuters expressed fears over the safety of the road and urged the authorities to carry out immediate repairs to prevent further deterioration.

To avoid any accident, the bridge had been cordoned off by armed men of the Amotekun corps.

Officials of the Osun State Government are yet to issue any official statement on the development as of the time of filing this report.

Also, Director General, Ajisope Development Initiative (ADI), Akin Adeyi, yesterday decried the threatening collapse of N20 billion Lameco Flying overhead bridge constructed by Governor Adeleke administration.

“I saw this coming from the very beginning. From the conception stage, through the inflated contracts, right up to the commissioning day, I and a few others shouted. We warned. “

“We pointed at the shoddy work, the suspicious pricing, the absence of proper engineering standards. Did they listen? Of course not. They were too busy dancing, cutting ribbons, and flooding social media with propaganda.”

Meanwhile, the All Progressives Congress (APC) yesterday noted that the “Lameco Junction Flyover suffers integrity, structural tests, cracks, caves in.”

Osun APC solicited the help of NSE, COREN and others for immediate Intervention, saying the party had earlier disclosed that the flyover was awarded to an unqualified engineer and has been vindicated.

It would be recalled that the opposition APC has been accusing the Governor Adeleke of awarding the construction of the flyover to a fertiliser distributor and the governor combining the portfolio of the Commissioner for Works with his office.

The party in a statement issued by Kola Olabisi, Osun State APC Director of Media and Information, stressed “With this untoward development affecting the newly-constructed flyover by Governor Adeleke, it is not an hyperbolic expression to observe and conclude again that all the projects carried out by the incumbent administration are grossly substandard.

“If a two-week N20 billion flyover can give a conspicuous sign of failure of structural and integrity test, what will become of it in one year and beyond?

“The observed failure of the structural and integrity tests by the Lameco flyover in Osogbo within two weeks of its commissioning is making a spiritual statement that the administration of the Accord Party governor has failed irredeemably.

“We are demanding the intervention of the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE); the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN); Nigerian Institute of Building (NIOB); Nigerian Institution of Civil Engineers (NICE) and Association for Consulting Engineering in Nigeria (ACEN) to urgently invoke their regulatory machinery in preventing imminent disaster likely to be brought on the state through the construction of substandard roads,  bridges and flyovers being the only area the outgoing Governor Adeleke can claim to have touched in the state.

“It is our resolve that these engineering bodies should urgently prevail on Governor Adeleke to stop forthwith the commissioning of other roads, bridges and flyovers in the state to enable the construction engineering experts to come up with their investigation on the projects in the overall interest of the safety of the good people of the state and Nigerians at large.”

The party urged the stakeholders in the Osun State project to condemn the utter wastage of the N20 billion being the “cost of constructing the death trap as a flyover in the Osogbo.”