By Adenitan Akinola
On January 18th last year, Osun State Governor, Senator Ademola Adeleke announced the construction of boreholes in each of the 332 political wards in the state to cushion the effect of water scarcity.
It was one of the cardinal programmes to mark his 100 days in office.
As announced by the Governor in his January speech, on the 27th of March last year, Adeleke told Osun people that boreholes had been constructed in each of the 332 wards in the state with water running satisfactorily from the Boreholes.
On July 3rd, 4 months after government claimed that the boreholes were working well; Governor Adeleke distributed generating set to each of the 332 locations to power the boreholes.
Investigation by Radio Nigeria reveals that the boreholes are functional in some areas, while they do not exist in other locations, and not functional in some other places visited.
At Ward 2 Aruru Balogun Compound as well as ward 5 both in Olorunda local Government, the boreholes had been abandoned by the residents due to its poor state of service and weeds have taken over the place, save for the dry season.
A resident of the Aruru Balogun Compound, Mr Sherif Abideen commended the siting of the borehole in area but maintained that it had never produced a drop of water since then.
Similarly, at Ward 2, 6 and 14 of Osogbo, the state capital water was not running in the facilities despite provision of generating sets to power the boreholes.
Radio Nigeria also visited locations in Boripe, Irewole, Olaoluwa, Ilesa East and West where only few of the boreholes were functioning well.
The borehole overhead tank at Ward 7, Irewole Local Government had collapsed.
One of the residents, who spoke to Radio Nigeria Mr Jamiu Olatunde shared the harrowing experience of people of the area, whom he said had resorted back to the stream in the area.
An Osun based civil society organisation, the Osun masterminds had earlier criticized the 332 borehole project, describing it as lacking in due process, while it observed that many of the boreholes were not functioning.
Consequently, sometimes in October last year, the Osun Masterminds dragged the government before the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, ICPC over the borehole project as confirmed by the group’s spokesperson, Mr Ayodeji Ologun, who alleged that the Borehole contract was not advertised,bidded and awarded in compliance with the Osun State Public Procurement Law, 2015.
However, the state government maintained that only few of the Boreholes had issue due to insufficient technical appraisal of their locations before construction.
The Osun State commissioner for water resources, Me Sunday Oroniyi explained that only few of the boreholes had issues which are already been addressed.
Mr Oroniyi said government was already working on the phase two of the boreholes across the 332 wards, but would play more emphasis on technical evaluation of the areas to be cited, to avoid challenge faced during the first phase.
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