By Ademola Adeeko

It’s funny how people have not taken a walk to the other side of the divide. When I talk about the divide, I don’t mean the common anti-government and pro-government stand. I mean the wealth and the poverty divide. Although I also used to be of the opinion that it is not possible for a normal human being to live on a dollar a day. Who does that? How can that be possible when a dollar is just the equivalent of about 156 Naira? I even used to argue that even if there were such people existing, then it’s definitely not in this same Nigeria I live in. Well I guess that was due to the fact that my world evolved around me, I really hadn’t taken a step on to the other side, I mean the extreme side. I didn’t know all that reasoning was about to change because recently, I saw poverty with my two naked eyes and that brought me to a conclusion that poverty isn’t an abstract noun, it has taken a physical form in the Nigerian society.

Although, it is something we come across everyday, but do you know that despite the fame of poverty in Nigeria, it’s something that comes in at different levels? For those of you who believe there are no Nigerians living under a dollar a day, I’ll advise that you take a trip up to Sie-Olorunsogo, Irepodun Local Government Area, Kwara state, North Central Nigeria.

Sie-Olorunsogo is a very small and remote village under Irepodun LGA in the North Central Region of Nigeria. It’s a few kilometers from Oro town under the same LGA. The only road that leads to the village is along Ijomu-Oro road which is inaccessible by cars unless you’re driving an SUV which even at that might leave you with a torn bumper or a disengaged exhaust pipe.

Recently, as part of our fulfillment of service under the NYSC scheme, I decided to join the Nigerian Christian Corpers’ Fellowship (NCCF) on an evangelical/humanitarian outing we call the Rural Rugged. It is a program funded by christian corp members to reach the poor and needy. It has since been a tradition that every batch will have to carry out at least one humanitarian effort before their eventual passing out. This programme is one which I enjoyed so much during the time I spent in Kwara state as a youth corper. As a matter of fact, I can say that the Rural Rugged is the only relevant effort that the NYSC programme yielded so far in Kwara state.

Back to my journey to Sie-Olorunsogo. The journey was bumpy as the pathway was the roughest I’ve seen in recent times. You know the kind of rough journey that could terminate a 7 month old pregnancy? After about 2 hours of traveling on what wasn’t more than a 100km stretch, we arrived our destination: a small community littered scarcely with mud houses and thatched roofs. What I saw amazed me. Not even one concrete building? In this much acclaimed developed Kwara state? I couldn’t believe my eyes. The whole place seemed deserted except for kids playing around the place naked, dirty and looking malnourished. At first I thought I was watching the movie “Sometime In April” where flicks of poor villages adorned the scenes depicting the aftermath of the ethnic cleansing between the Hutus and the Tutsis. It was a sight you’ll never wish to behold.

As our bus halted in front of an old, dirty building which apparently was the only school in the community, I knew more horrors were waiting to be discovered. Amazingly, when we started alighting from the bus in our NYSC uniforms, the naked kids who were playing around took to their heels. I stood rooted to one spot in shock as the kids all ran away from us. They all went into hiding probably because of the uniforms they saw us in. It took the efforts of myself and my colleagues to familiarize ourselves with the community as we approached their houses one after the other to invite them out. Some trusted us enough to follow us based on the fact that we spoke to them in the yoruba language, others rebuffed our pleas without hesitation. We were helpless but we had to carry on with the programme.

After an hour of creating awareness in the village, the villagers started trooping out to the school building where we were camped and the programme began in earnest. While some were given medical attention, some had their hair shampooed,washed, plaited, the male villagers had their hair cut. We donated food, toiletries, clothing, drugs and countless humanitarian aids.

I was in the haircut section where I encountered so much that I almost puked. It was so obvious how much these people couldn’t afford a simple haircut. When I asked if they didn’t have a barber around, they simply answered me: “where is the light?” Only then did it dawn on me that through out our journey down to the community, we never came across one single strand of electric wire save for an electric pole. I shook my head in disbelief and sadness. What more can I ask from a village where “Dunlop slippers” is a luxury? I was really ashamed for my country. I wondered how easy it was for the government to neglect those people in an area where posters of campaigns for elections were still visible on the walls of their houses. No social amenity of whatsoever form or magnitude was implemented in that village. As a matter of fact, the network coverage in the place was provided by MTN and even at that, there were specific locations you will have to stand in before you can make or receive calls.

Everything about the village reeked of nothing but under-development and poverty at its peak. I wept silently when I saw elderly ones standing in long queues to get drugs from our doctors as apparently there was no medical facility in the vicinity. The children have not had their baths in days as they reeked of dirt and all sorts of flying insects were their constant sidekicks. In fact, the dandruff I encountered on their heads as I scrapped the months-old hair off was a threat to the clippers. It was so bad that words couldn’t express my sadness and anger. All I could breathe out were curses on the leaders of Kwara state. How people could be wallowing in a pool of endless poverty is a big shame on the government of this country while billions are being looted on a daily basis. The urge to have more than you need is the highest pinnacle of greed ever known to man and this disease has been the common behavioral attitude of our leaders.

Places like Sie-Olorunsogo are typical examples of a breeding ground for social and political nuisances. These are the places where politicians will visit first for election campaigns. These are the people who will sell out their whole lives for a carton of Indomie. These are the people who won’t bother whether the aspirant is credible or not before they thumbprint. Sadly, these kind of people make up 70% of the Nigerian population. For these people, the politics of ideas do not appeal to them, all they want is to have their present hunger satisfied. They care less about what happens after the elections. In most rural communities in Nigeria, folks do not even know the names of their Governors.

The failure of the government to close the gap between the rich and the poor after such a long while seems to me like an intentional project. “Keep them hungry so they will easily yield to our demands after we must have offered them crumbs”. These and more are my grouse against the Saraki families. They’ve been in power since the inception of democracy till date. What has changed? Little did I know that Sie-Olorunsogo is just one of the numerous poverty-stricken communities spread all over Kwara state. Ever heard of Baruten, Kaiama, Patigi and Edu Local Government Areas? Take a tour around the afore-mentioned places and you will see for yourselves. The worrisome aspect of these whole situation is the fact that if I were a foreign journalist and I decide to make a short movie on that community, I know I’ll be labeled an enemy of the Nigerian government.

Nevertheless, what I saw in Sie-Olorusogo, Irepodun LGA was nothing but abject poverty. I saw poverty, it looked back at me and guess what? Poverty said ‘Hi’.