It’s a bright new day for dwellers of some remote farm settlements in Osun State, as the state chapter of Rural Access Mobility Projects (O’RAMP) recently opened them up through construction of access roads and bridges. Daniel Adeleye, who recently toured the communities, reports.
FOLLOWING about three hours journey from Osogbo, the Osun State capital, characterised by chirruping of birds, itchy bites of sun flies and banters of local farmers as, our team of journalists finally arrived the bank of River Shasha. Shasha River, according to dwellers of Womole farm settlement in Irewole Local Government Area of the state and environs, is a crocodile infested river that has for decades caused them severe pains, weeping, sorrow and untimely death. The journalists were on inspection tour of some of the completed road and bridge projects by the Osun State chapter Rural Access Mobility Projects (RAMP).
With over 70 percent of its population living in rural areas and embracing farming as their major occupation and source of livelihood, Osun State, South-West Nigeria, can be categorised as an agrarian state. The people of Womole farm settlement, it was learnt, had migrated from various villages and communities within and outside Osun State to settle at the bank of Shasha River, all in a bid to benefit from its rich farm land and maximize their efforts.
As part of his campaign promises in 2006, Engr Rauf Aregbesola had vowed to open up the rural areas as a means of, not just reducing the rural-urban drift, but to ensure that farm produces get to markets in urban centers in good time, thereby adding value to the agricultural sector in line with his administration’s six point action plan to banish hunger and poverty. This is also expected to complement the federal government economic diversification quest.
The seriousness of the Aregbesola-led administration at opening up rural areas attracted the attention of international organisations, federal government of Nigeria and partnership sponsors, who financed construction and rehabilitation of earthen roads and bridges that linked rural communities to the outer roads.
The state government has thus, through the coordination of Rural Access Mobility Project (RAMP), rehabilitated over 214km roads across the four regions of the state, namely: Ife region 1 and 2, Iwo and Ilesha. Aside these, another 374km of rural roads have been identified, designed and about to be implemented.
Since the creation of the state in 1991, the people lament that they have literally been neglected, cheated and left disadvantaged at the point of their needs by successive administrations, until the advent of the incumbent Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola administration.
Even though they are not making high demands of the government, years of infrastructural deprivation and inability to transport their produces have so impoverished them, that majority struggle to raise funds to educate their children.
Coordinator of Ayedade-Oyere Farmers Association, Evangelist Samson Ilori Makinde, who addressed journalists in clear Queen’s English accent, revealed that their farming activities in Ayedade-Oyere Farm settlement dated forty years back but lamented that Shasha River has unfortunately, been their nightmare for several years.
Makinde narrated the yearly sorry story of untimely deaths the people have had to go experience via the crocodile infested river; saying there was no year the river did not sweep away human beings.
“The Odeyinka-Oyere Road is the major road that all of us pass through and it’s about 25km long. The biggest problem we used to have being the Shasha River overflow from early May to October every year”, he stated.
Clad in old brown short-sleeve cotton suit, with a faded brown cap, the middle-age Makinde recalled that there used to be more rains in the past before global warming sets in and going out to farms, became a thing to be afraid of, especially between May and October every year.
“We had a small wooding canoe that all of us were using to cross the river and if one was lucky to cross the river without any incident, you gave thanks to God and prayed for safety for another day. This was how we were living our lives in fear and agony for several years,” he recollected.
Speaking on the some of the souls that has been lost to the river, he said, “I can remember a man called Dasese from Cross Rivers State, who was consumed by the river. There is also the case of a young man who used to help us with the canoe to cross the river; one day after he had crossed the river and was trying to offload the goods in the canoe, the water came and swept him away. There was also a man called Baba Dare a.k.a O sun mon mi; he got drowned in the river with his wife and three children while returning home from the farm. There are several others, who time and space may not permit me to mention. River Shasha remained our nightmare for decades at Womole and other nearby farm settlements before the Osun RAMP came to rescue us by constructing a bridge over it.”
Makinde, an ex-soldier also depicted their story of frustration, when he recounted how their farm produces were wasting away due to lack of accessible road to transport them to the markets in towns and cities. He said successive administrations literally ignored them until the Aregbesola administration came on board.
“A few years ago, we were prompted to act by writing a letter to Osun State House of Assembly and from there we were directed to the governor’s office. Though the governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola was not around that day, we submitted the letter to the Secretary to the State government.
“To our surprise, few months later, we began to see movements of government officials coming to inspect the river. We prayed and waited upon God for the spate of death to stop among us. Initially, we saw it as one of those movements from government to deceive us, but it became a reality. The Osun Rural Access Mobility Projects (RAMP) came and constructed the bridge and the nightmare of several years turned to unspeakable joy. The spate of death and agony vanished, our farm produce can now get to the market, and life came back to us,” he said.
Highlighting the impact of the bridge on their socio-economic life, Makinde said the villagers are now buying vehicles and generally living a better lifestyle.
“Now many villagers can buy vehicles. In my own farm settlement alone, about seven vehicles have been bought. Our farm produces that used to rot away, now get to the market and cities in good time. Osogbo, the state capital, has become like a stone throw to us to move our farm produce and sell.
“Health wise, we are also better. When there was no road, we depended on the hands of God and traditional medicine for healing when we fall sick, but now, vehicles can now come and pick us from our house to the hospital and bring us back.”
Asked how pregnant women fared with regards to antenatal care, immunisation and schooling for their children before the construction of the bridge, Makinde said it was usually an ugly experience for any man who gets his wife pregnant. As a result, he said, such women usually relocated to the town, once the Estimated Date of Delivery (EDD) was approaching to avoid any unsavoury occurrence.
“I was a witness to one of such situations, when a woman in labour was being ferried to a nearby health centre and she gave up the ghost before they got there.”
He recalled another incident when “another pregnant woman was miraculously saved at a village called Toro, after she had been stressed out and could no longer move, after several hours of trying to access medical care due to the bad road.”
Adenike Olaposi, a trader, shared her personal experience on the Shasha River, when she was going for a scan during pregnancy of one of her children.
“I was going for a scan at Omu, a neigbouring village, when we got to the belly of the river and the canoe suddenly diverted and almost capsized. Believe me, to get pregnant before now was a big challenge.”
She spoke of how, sometimes, women who went for immunisation at neighbouring Orile-Owu had to trek 5kilometres to get back to their settlement.
Although Womole Farm Settlement had a community primary school, the people said apart from being under-staffed, the few teachers rarely came in until Wednesday and usually left Friday morning. This, they said, made proper education impossible and prompted many parents to withdraw and enroll their children in better schools far away from the community, where they only come back at weekends or during holidays.
But now, Makinde, looking visibly happy, said with a smile, “Now we thank God; our children go to school and come back to us every day.”
Asked if they ever got to vote during the years of neglect, Chief Abioye Oso a.k.a Oloriebi answered in the affirmative.
“What they did to us was that whenever elections were approaching, they brought and stationed caterpillars by our roads to deceive us, and as soon as we gave them our mandates they abandon us. It was not until the current administration under the leadership of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola came through O’RAMP and remembered us. We embraced them and today we can go to anywhere we like at our convenience.”
With the desire for bridge fulfilled, the people, like Oliver Twist, are pleading with the Osun State government for more amenities to match up with other towns and cities around.
At Ife-Tuntun farm settlement in Ife North Local Government, it was the same story of despair, abandonment and poverty before the advent of Aregbesola’s administration.
According to them, after several years of darkness, despair and frustration, they saw light at the end of the tunnel, when a 39km Shasha Road (from Lawoka Junction)-Apoje junction was constructed.
A woman likely in her 60s, who simply identified herself as Mrs. Adeyeba, could not hide her joy when the convoy of journalists arrived the sleepy farm settlement.
After exchanging banters and pleasantries with the team of journalists, Adeyeba hurriedly announced that the people will forever show their profound gratitude to Aregbesola’s administration, for liberating them from their past neglect.
“This road was constructed by RAMP, but before then, we used to trek about 34 km bush track to the town. If we set out at 6 am, we usually didn’t get to our destination until 6-7pm; and that’s with heavy loads on our heads.
“Sometimes we fell and the gaari and oil we bought from the market would mix together and that’s how we would eat it. But when God would take control, he sent Ogbeni Aregbesola to us through Osun RAMP and they constructed road for us,” she narrated.
President of Ife Zonal Farmers Association of Nigeria, Mukaila Akeeb, reiterated the sorry state of the farmers before the 39.1km road was constructed along Ife-Tuntun farm settlement.
He said, “We have been here for about twenty-one years, and we suffered for over sixteen years before the Aregbesola-led administration through RAMP came to liberate us. It was like a dream because we were not expecting it.”
“We were here without road and our farm produce were wasting because there was no accessible road to take them to the market. The only things that differentiated us from animals were the clothes we wore because we were living with animals. The forest was so thick; we were only able to sight the sky around 12 noon. That was how we lived our lives for over sixteen years before the road was constructed. But we were steadfast in our hope that one day God will send us a helper.”
“Today we are happy that our hope was not dashed. It would have been practically impossible for anyone to come here to look for us if RAMP had not constructed the road.
“We are now better people, our farm produce can get to market, there is road for us to get healthcare, our children can go to school and come back, we can eat what we want, we can also buy vehicles and build houses all because we are able to take our farm produce to the market for sell,” a visibly elated Akeeb stressed.
A call to do more
While applauding the fact that the community can now access healthcare more easily, Akeeb is clamouring for more amenities, especially potable water.
At the moment, he said, “We drink from erosion and many have contracted typhoid and other diseases from there. Here in this farm settlement, people defecate in the bush and when it rains, erosion will wash feaces in the bush to the stream where we fetch our drinking water, and that’s how we drink it. So we are begging government to also look into that for us.”
The people of Ife-Tuntun and Womole Farm settlements are also asking for enfranchisement.
“We are Nigerians of about 75,000 people living in this area, who are being disenfranchised. We want to exercise our civic right by participating in choosing the leader of our choice.
“We are farmers, and our slogan is ‘No farmer, no nation’. Without farmers, there is nobody. Nobody can do anything without food; food first. So we are pleading with the government to assist us more,” Akeeb pleaded.
RAMP is out to provide rural communities with good life
Responding to their requests, a development communication specialist, Prince Oladoja Adedokun, who led the team of journalists to inspect the projects said it would not be an over-statement to say that Osun Rural Access and Mobility Project (O’RAMP) has turned the lives of beneficiaries of the projects to paradise.
Adedokun disclosed that Osun RAMP is set to improve transport conditions and bring sustained access to the rural population through rehabilitation and maintenance of key rural transport infrastructure in a sustainable manner.
He stated that road is an open door to several other social amenities and assured the people that Osun RAMP will look into their requests.
“Ife-Tuntun was completely a forest; there was no road at all when we came. It is RAMP that constructed the road.
“Our project is a composite project, it facilitates many other things. We have to approach it with the way it should be approached,” he said.
Addressing journalists in his office in Osogbo, the Project Coordinator, Osun Rural Access and Mobility Project (O’RAMP), Engr. Adelere Adeyemi Oriolowo disclosed that his agency has upgraded and rehabilitated over 214km roads across the four regions of Osun State.
He said those projects implemented by the agency are purely technical and by design, devoid of political inclination or favouritism.
“Before the selection of the roads and the projects, a prioritisation survey consultancy was carried out and it was supervised by the missional office in Abuja and the World Bank. During the identification period, the bad roads were really predominant in the east and west senatorial districts of the state,” he stated.
Highlighting the activities of RAMP, Oriolowo restated that development of projects is to provide all year round access and mobility to communities in the rural areas in a sustainable manner.
Based on the criteria set for participation in the project, Oriolowo said a number of states in the country including Osun, Enugu, Adamawa, Niger, Imo, Kaduna and Cross-Rivers States were selected.
“We have about seven States participating now and the general objectives are to provide access to social amenities for the rural dwellers, to have access to education, health facilities, electoral processes, and political awareness and to improve agricultural production. The ease of carrying the inputs and outputs of the farms to the nearest markets to the consumers,” he stressed.
He thus assured the people that the body will be looking seriously into their demands.
He explained that development is a continuum, stating that “The solution to one problem is the creation of another one. Of course anybody that doesn’t have access to road will not even think of school or any other social amenities. But once you have good roads what you should be thinking of next is how to get schools, health facilities, light and so on. God answering our prayers all those things would be there, because for now we have the capacity to do it.
“We are trying to rehabilitate roads that link bridges and culverts, which we call emanating routes, so that they will be rehabilitated to the status of the ones we have seen now. But we are going on another tranche, the second tranche of road, which is about 307 km that will cover the entire three senatorial districts in the state; the central, west and the east,” he unveiled.
Asked how RAMP discovered places like Womole, Ife-Tuntun and other interior farm settlements, where its projects have seriously impacted lives, the project coordinator explained that at the selection stage, the agency made a lot of consultations and sensitisation workshops, where community leaders from all rural areas were invited. The agency also made it a point of duty to engage the local government chairmen and the other political officers to submit the list of roads that needed rehabilitation and reconstruction in their areas.
“Through this process we were able to identify many roads. We have almost 2000kms of roads in about 700 roads. This is the list that we gave to consultants that prioritise the roads and it was out of those prioritised roads that we were able to locate those roads selected for rehabilitation,”
