By Adeeko Ademola Abayomi (@OccupyNaija) and Onanubi Niyi

Not long ago, I wrote an article titled In “Kwara State, Poverty Said Hi” which consistently focused on the level of poverty in Kwara state. While so many people agreed with me on the state of living of the people of Kwara state coupled with the oppulence and affluence being enjoyed by their so called leaders, others simply gave me a knock claiming everything I wrote about the state was untrue. As a matter of fact, I got a reply from someone who wrote like an aide to the governor of the state in form of a rejoinder who justified the reluctance of the leaders of the state to develop the natural and human resources in order to spread wealth across. I know I bruised a lot of ego by my revealing article but it was worth the trouble. Just to buttress and validate my words in my own article, Akinsola Tolulope decided to write her own version of the Kwara story. Tolulope was a youth corper who served in one of the very under-developed corners of Kwara state and this is what she wrote:

“Okay so I finally set out to write about my experience in Kwara state during my NYSC service year coupled with the level of poverty in the state.

A visitor coming into Kwara State through Ilorin will be most impressed about the state of development in the state. Everywhere I visited in Ilorin had tarred roads, modern buildings. The horror and the poverty that has eaten deep into the state can be seen and felt anywhere after Ilorin. Just imagine a very haggard man, with very dirty dreads, long and reaching his bum, one slipper hanging on asking for release, tattered clothing, looking lean- yes, that’s how poverty looks in other parts of the State.

First thing we were told as we got off the bus from Lagos to board the Yikpata camp bound bus was “Na MTN you dey use? Na the only network wey dey there be that o” from sim pack vendors. As a sharp Lagos girl that I am, I thought it was a scam to lure me into buying their sim packs. It wasn’t.

Edu Local Government is home to the Yikapata NYSC Camp. Vehicles travel for over 1 hour to get to this camp from somewhere on the outskirts of Ilorin. I never bothered to find out the name. Travelling to the camp, one would think it’s because the LG is on the outskirts that there was so much poverty. Long story short, I saw first-hand poverty in real form. Apparently, it’s only the NYSC programme that brings vehicles to that part of the state for as we passed through some villages, the way the people looked at us suggested they only get to see this view once in every 3 months. If you were a fan of the Tales By Moonlight series, you know those kind of thatched roof round huts you see on tv? Yes, those ones. I saw them live. They lined the roads and even inside the local government.

Inside the camp was another story. There was no potable water.

My first bath in camp was to buy two bags of sachet water. The camp’s ground looked like a desert, so hot and dusty. Coupled with the fact that it was the dry season, it was a terrible sight to behold. To make issues worse, we learnt that the small streams around the camp had dried up completely during this season and the Fulanis around would go digging for water for us to buy. A bucket of water was sold for N30 while a big basin was for N80. As terrible as the atmosphere around the camp also was the food being served to corps members. In order not to deviate from the topic, let’s skip the camp story.
During posting, everyone prayed not be posted to places like Baruten, Patigi LGA. Those places were the most dreaded LGAs in Kwara state. The shortest distance from Ilorin to Baruten LGA is between 5-7 hours from Ilorin because of the bad roads. Although, I never got to go there because the thought of sitting through an entire 7 hours journey on a bumpy road is sickening.

I got posted to the Oyun Local Government. And I cried! I had passed through “almost cities” and I had hoped the seat of my LGA would look somewhat like what I had seen. LIE!! The seat of power for the LG is in ILEMONA. A village! No tarred roads anywhere in sight. You can practically count the number of houses around. I think even the sheep and goats outnumbered the houses. But at least, some of the houses were built with cement. I was posted to a primary school where I had to take a bike to and fro for N500. Getting there with another corps member, we waited for the Principal” of the school (now I wish I had a camera phone to remember the school’s building). But it didn’t look good not even a bit. I dismissed the thought of the school building with a shrug. We made up our minds to induce our posting to the school. The principal came and almost begged us to stay as Agric/ Science teacher and Math’s/Computer studies teacher respectively. It was after we got rejected that we found out the man had been teaching those subjects.

We eventually got posted to the Ilemona College of Education.
All of our colleagues were green with envy. Immediately, we (3 of us) were assigned as Biology, Computer and Chemistry “Lecturers”. Resumption was immediate. The Chairman of the school, quite a popular figure in Offa was to meet with us the following day. The Registrar of the school, who also doubled as the HOD of English gave us orientation. Our monthly allowance was N5, 000. We thought that okay, at least the Ilemona Secondary school corps members were getting N1, 500.
So we set about looking for accommodation. There was no house in the whole of Ilemona at the time that had either toilet nor bathroom. Everything was done “in the bush”. Rents were hiked to N700 because of corps members. Don’t even bother going to the Offa market with your NYSC uniform. The notion is that corpers are very well paid.

Finally, after going to Offa, which is a minimum of N150 bike fare on an un-tarred road from Ilemona, someone pointed a set of self-contained rooms to us. We grabbed it! Poverty reeked in Ilemona.

We found out from some of the school ‘lecturers” that we were lucky to be paid the amount we were getting as monthly allowance. We were told the previous batch didn’t get up to that. That was when we got the gist on how much their salary (plus all benefits) was. N25, 000 per senior lecturer. Yes, transport fare for you in Lagos? Mind you, these lecturers are Bsc holders, with some MSc in view. And none of them taught one course. They taught 2 or more courses at a time.

I can’t begin to describe the level of decay in the educational sector in that Local Government; from the Primary school level to the Secondary school and the College, very disheartening. You either had to teach in Yoruba, Pidgin English or just teach in English and expect to spend extra 2 hours in class on a 30 minutes lecture because you have to explain every English grammar you speak. The school management wasn’t bothered about the academic welfare of their students. They weren’t disturbed by the low academic standards. The schools lack admission process. The reigning policy is; as long as you can afford the school fees, you are a student. If as a student you fail to pay your school fees on time, you miss the semester or sometimes a whole session. Students had to beg corps members to help raise funds to pay for their school fees. The lucky ones had parents who could pay. And even at that, some pay the tuituion fee in installments. You only attend lectures for the semester you pay for. You are allowed to miss semesters and return 10 months after but that won’t be after you must have paid the school fees. The most uncomfortable part of this decay is that; the Ministry of Education frequents these schools on regular inspections.

We also helped participate in supervision of the Teaching Practice where the students were posted to schools all over the state. Not very few schools rejected students because according to them, “they were not up to the standard to teach their students”. Apart from the fact that there were more buildings and vehicles in some of the places we went to, most of the places could be likened to the Ilemona I was coming from. These ‘unbaked’ students had no idea what they were teaching. Funny enough, some of these student teachers would graduate from their various colleges to further their education in Polytechnics or even Universities while others will get jobs as teachers with their Grade 2 teachers’ certificate. You can imagine the products from all over these institutions.

The Voters’ registration further opened us to the other parts of the State. I was posted to Igbotele, about 35 minutes on a motorbike from Offa. The most modern building in that town is owned by the director of a certain commercial bank. Major occupation in that land is farming and you can carry out a population census of the town with just a single stroll. The absence of modern commercial farming was obviously present. MTN network was the only network available and you still have to move to a substantial height off the ground level to be able to make or receive calls. Although, this town is just 15 minutes away from Ilorin, un-tarred roads were visible everywhere, basic survival amenities were not available. It was during my service year that I found out Rice is still a privilege for some people as regular food. I never got round to going on NCCF Rural Rugged but stories we heard were not different from the ones told by Adeeko Ademola Abayomi (@OccupyNaija) in his article.

The only good thing we found out through our journeys across some parts of the state were electricity poles. Yet one wonders what the “Sai Baba” as the late senior Saraki and his family had done to deserve so much loyalty and praise from the people of the state.

The majority of people who suffer from the corrupt practices perpetrated by our leaders are at the rural levels, most times the barely adequate amenities we enjoy in urban areas is a mirage to them (rural dwellers). A grass root sensitization should begin with these ones. Their mentality has to change from voting for a ‘Sai Baba” because he is giving out 2 sachets of noodles, a box of matches or N500 which will further impoverish and enslave them and their children. I hope these rural dwellers who dwell in nothing but poverty won’t vote another 4 years of their lives to their oppressors under the guise of loyalty because 2015 is not so far away as we think. Most northern states and north central states like Kwara state have people who blindly believe the definition of loyalty is following a particular person who provides them with daily meal till the end of time irrespective of the person’s source(s) of income. This kind of mentality has to be cleared out of the people’s mind else they’ll all perish in abject poverty.

Same Bukola Saraki who has done absolutely nothing in Kwara state is the same person who’s reportedly moving the motion for increment of their salaries/allowances in the senate despite making up to 30 million Naira on a monthly basis and having nothing but a large mass of wealth to show for it.”

Tolulope Akinsola is an Account Relationship Manager with an ICT firm. She’s based in Lagos. For further engagements, she’s @yelecapri10 on Twitter