Oke Owu Street, Odeomu: The Road That Governance Forgot

A major community road in Ayedaade LGA lies abandoned and impassable — its bridge split clean in two, its residents left to fend for themselves under an administration that promised better.

Residents of Oke Owu Street in Odeomu, Ayedaade Local Government Area, have been left to navigate what can only be described as an obstacle course — a road so severely deteriorated that it poses daily danger to commuters, traders, schoolchildren, and emergency vehicles alike.

Video footage documented on May 4, 2026 shows the true state of this road. The craters. The exposed laterite. The surfaces rendered treacherous by rainfall. But at the heart of the footage is something far more alarming than a pothole: a bridge, serving one of Odeomu’s most important roads, that has cracked and split into two separate halves — physically disconnecting the road and making passage almost impossible.

The person behind the camera says it plainly: “This is a major road. A major road. And nobody is doing anything.”

He is right.

A Community Cut Off

Oke Owu Street is not a back alley. It is — or rather, it was — a key arterial road serving the Odeomu community. Residents depended on it daily: traders moving goods to market, schoolchildren walking to class, motorcycles and vehicles connecting households to the wider LGA. It was the town’s circulatory system.

The bridge that once carried that traffic across now stands fractured in two. The structural failure has left the road physically disconnected. For vehicles, the elderly, and anyone carrying goods or a child, passage has become a daily act of risk.

This is not damage that appeared overnight. Infrastructure of this kind deteriorates over months and years of deferred maintenance. The question is not simply why the bridge broke — it is why, under an administration now in its third year, no assessment has been conducted, no contractor mobilised, and no timeline offered to the people of Odeomu.

The Promise Was Clear

During the 2022 gubernatorial campaign, Governor Ademola Adeleke pledged to prioritise community road infrastructure across all 30 LGAs of Osun State. Ayedaade residents voted in hope. What they received instead was neglect.

The condition of Oke Owu Street is not an isolated case — it is a pattern. Across Ayedaade LGA and the wider state, community roads that were already struggling have been left to deteriorate further, with no new intervention, no contractor mobilisation, and no communication to affected residents.

What This Costs Ordinary People

The damage is not just physical — it is economic and human:

• Traders carrying goods to and from Odeomu market face longer, more expensive alternative routes — where alternative routes even exist
• Motorcycles and vehicles sustain damage navigating the craters, increasing transport costs for already stretched households
• Children walking to school navigate mud, standing water, and a fractured bridge during the rainy season
• Emergency vehicles — ambulances, fire services — cannot reliably pass through this route
• Economic activity and livelihoods in the immediate area are suppressed by the inaccessibility of the road

Nobody Is Coming

What makes the footage from May 4, 2026 particularly damning is not just the scale of the damage — it is the silence around it. No construction signs. No contractor equipment. No government notices. No indication that anyone in the Adeleke administration has visited, assessed, or acknowledged the collapse.

The bridge has split in two. The road is abandoned.

“This is a major road,” the voice behind the camera says. “A major road.”

He says it twice. As if once is not enough for a government that has heard nothing.