Sometime in 1992, Olojede Mukaila was an apprentice electronics repairer in his native Eruwa in Oyo State. Alongside his fellow apprentices, Mukaila looked forward to becoming an established master of the trade within four years. But the journey took him more than one decade.
Olojede Mukaila was one of the few lucky victims of the deadly operations of electrical cable vandals, who threw an entire ethnic group, comprising seven large towns and even larger number of smaller villages, into darkness for almost 10 years.
While Mukaila is lucky to practise his trade today, several of his colleagues have ended up in the local farms as peasant farmers, with many of them taking solace in commercial motorcycle, popular known as okada, business. Even many more lost their wives because they could not provide for their families.
Speaking with The Nation in his shop in Eruwa, Mukaila said: “Those years of darkness brought untold pains and sorrows to many married men in our community, especially those who depended on power supply to earn a living. This was because they were unable to work and get money to provide for the needs of their families.
“They had no alternative means of getting money and each time their wives asked them for money to feed, they were unable to provide. When this continued for a very long time, some of the women could not bear it again and had to go for capable men who could provide for their needs.
“There were some others who left the community to go and hustle in order to provide for their families. Before some of these men returned from their journeys, their wives had eloped with men that were available and meeting their needs. Those were years that nobody would wish to witness again because it put many homes and marriages asunder,” he added.
The seven towns that make up Ibarapa, namely, Eruwa, Igboora, Tapa, Idere, Igangan, Lanlete and Ayete were thrown into sordid darkness for eight years when vandals stormed the area in the dead of the night and rolled away an immeasurable quantity of live wires that supplies power to the entire area. They commenced the unholy operation from the outskirts of the town along Ibadan area and terminated at the tail of the entrance to Eruwa.
The dastardly act was said to have occurred sometime in 1993. Power supply did not return to the community until sometime in 2001. Some of the natives, who spoke with The Nation, tearfully recalled their ordeal in those years of darkness. It was amazing to learn that many married men in the area ended up losing their wives during those years.
Chief Emmanuel Olaoseagba, the Asaba of Isaba, in Eruwa, recalled how he was taunted by his friends when he left Lagos State to return to his home town after his retirement from the Nigerian Army.
According to him, after his retirement from the Nigerian Army, he wanted to stay back in Lagos. But an experience he had with a landlord changed his plan. He made up his mind to go back home despite the sad tales of darkness his people were going through at the time.
He explained: “When I wanted to come back home, my friends were making mockery of me. They said how on earth would I leave a city where there was power supply to relocate to a village where darkness was the order of the day? I didn’t mind them because I had made up my mind to return home. I decided to come back home because my landlord was threatening to eject me if I failed to pay on a particular date.
“I have two houses here in Eruwa and decided to come home instead of living at the mercy of a landlord in Lagos. I had the conviction that power supply would be restored to the community one day.
“It wasn’t easy coming back home to live in darkness after several years of living in Lagos. It was a horrible experience for me and a hell for the whole community because devilish people operated under the cover of darkness. When I came, I joined other eminent members of the community in seeking solution to the problem.”
Prince Akintoye Akinyemi, son of the immediate-past monarch of Igboora, pointed out: “Most children born around that period didn’t know there was anything called power supply or National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), the body that was responsible for power generation back then.
“Most of the artisans in this community that relied on power supply to make both ends meet either took to farming or commercial motorcycling. A good number of them ran to Lagos. If you took the statistics of commercial motorcyclists in Lagos then, you would have found out that a large percentage of them came from Igboora. Those dark years led to the exodus of our young men to other urban areas.”
He argued that the perpetrators of the odious crime were not members of the community, stressing said: “The perpetrators are from urban areas because our people have not gone wild to the extent of having the expertise in masterminding and executing such a mind-boggling crime. The hoodlums have been doing all that because they see us as helpless rural people.”
Raji Bello, an electronic repairer, said: “Most of my colleagues quit their jobs during those years that we didn’t have light. A good number of them either took to farming or commercial motorcycling. When the wire was reconnected, many of them had lost the skills and could not return to their jobs.
“Those dark days were the period I went through my apprenticeship. As an electronics apprentice, there was nothing for us to learn because there was no power supply for my boss to work not to talk of teaching us how to go about the job after graduation.
“Many people in the community didn’t even have any reason to bring their electronic appliances for repairs because they were just lying fallow in their various houses.”
Femi Babawale, a native of Eruwa, recounted that he was forced to quit his welding job during the dark period, adding: “After eight years of not practising the job I learnt, I lost my skills and since then, I have not been able to lay my hands on anything tangible. I have been experimenting with one trade or the other since then without any meaningful success.”
He expressed the optimism that the dark days would not resurface anymore, saying: “We have no reasons to be afraid that those dark days would return again because aside from the fact that security men have been employed to watch the wires, the villages around the wires have also been connected to the power source. By so doing, they have become stakeholders in making sure that vandals do not come to tamper with the live wires anymore.”
Students in the communities were not left out of the pains of the period. Kafayat Amisu, a native of Idere, gave a scary account of how mysterious creatures haunted her and other students during their days in Eruwa.
“We had a serious challenge as students back then in Eruwa because some mysterious creatures often invaded our hostels to intimidate us. It was possible for those evil creatures to operate because they thrive under the cover of darkness which the absence of power supply enhanced. This was prevalent around Oke Ola area of the town.
“On several occasions, our hostel, the New Dimension Villa, was invaded by those strange creatures. After that, they visited an indigene opposite our hostel. Their victim, a woman, was about opening her door to go out when a huge and dark strange creature confronted her. She threw everything she was holding away and ran for her dear lives. Some students’ food stuffs were mysteriously reducing in some hostels as a result of the activities of those weird creatures.
“We reported the issue to our landlord who told us that they were evil creatures who left the bush to wander about in the open. He said the community would have to offer sacrifice to send them back to the bush. It was after they did that, that we had respite.”
Cultism was also said to have assumed a worrisome dimension in some of the higher institutions of learning during those days.
A native of Ayete, who gave his name as Taokeek, said: “Cultism was at its peak during those days, especially in Eruwa. The cultists latched onto the opportunity proved by the darkness to meet and unleash terror on rival cult groups. Cult clashes and killings during that era are unprecedented in the history of Ibarapa.
“The darkness also made it impossible for many students to excel academically because there was little they could do in the night without power supply. We pray that such terrible days would not return to this area again.”
But the people are now happy. All their days of sorrow came to an end around 2001 when electricity was finally restored to the communities, ending their years of darkness. But with their sad experience in their mind, the people have put measures in place to ensure that they never return to darkness.
After power was restored to the ancient communities, the vandals made a quick return to repeat the ungodly act that brought untold hardship to the community. The vandals’ attempts have been foiled on two occasions by a team of security men set up by the communities in collaboration with the three local government areas that make up the area.
Commander Bamidele Mufutau, a team leader of the vigilance group, said: “We were employed by the local governments to watch over the live wires and also secure the communities. We have arrested about seven vandals on two different occasions when they came to perpetrate their heinous crime in the communities. The first time, we laid ambush for them and arrested three of them. The second time, we arrested four. They always come to do this nefarious activity around 1:00am. It was around this time that they came on the two occasions we caught them.”
“After the second group of vandals was caught”, he continued, “others were apparently told by their informants about our presence in the area. This made them to change their tactics. The other time they came, they parked their vehicle at a distance and kept planning on the strategy to adopt to have a successful operation. They eventually left when it was glaring to them that their game plan had been clearly understood. Our team could not really swoop on them and apprehend them just like that because they had not committed the crime and there was no evidence that we had to prove that they were criminals.”
After these failed attempts, it appeared that the vandals had been pummelled to the point of submission and the residents could sleep with their two eyes open. But it was eventually not so.
After several years of being in the cooler, the vandals recently staged a comeback. This time around, they became more daring than ever when they invaded Onigbaana and Okolo communities in Eruwa in the dead of the night and made away with the transformer through which power was supplied to the embattled communities. Unlike in the previous operations when they went with only their working tools, residents of the areas told The Nation that the hoodlums were heavily armed when they came to steal the transformer.
John Abiodun, a resident of Abule Onigbana, recounted their plight on that fateful day: “It was a night anybody in this community would never want to remember in his life because we had never experienced such torrential gunshots that we had on that day.
“The hoodlums came around 2:00am with sophisticated weapons and tools. Before they began their operations they shot ceaselessly around the community forcing our security men to abandon their duty posts in order to save their lives. Our hearts were on our lips all through the period they carried out their dastardly business. It was a night of horror that nobody will pray to experience again.”
Semiu Jimoh, another resident of the community, lamented that the hoodlums have returned them to the era of darkness that they thought was forever gone.
“We have been made to go back to the period of living in darkness all over again by the hoodlums. Since they took the transformer away, we have not had power supply in our area. It was unthinkable that anybody would come in the dead of the night to uproot a whole transformer. I have heard of people stealing vital objects from a transformer but I hadn’t heard that anybody stole a whole transformer. If it had not happened in my community, I would have doubted it. It is pathetic that the hoodlums have re-strategised by moving from stealing live wires to coming to steal a whole transformer.”
The Nation findings have revealed that residents of Seme border are presently locked in the same difficult situation that the people of Ibarapa found themselves several years ago. For the past six years, the border community has been in darkness.
Chief Ibidun Joshua, a leading member of the community, said their woes began when reckless drivers began to hit and pull down electric poles that supplied power to the area.
“After the poles were pulled down by reckless drivers, vandals took the stage and started carting the live wires away.
“ We, the residents of the community, have done everything within our power to salvage the situation but it appears that some forces are bent on keeping us in this disgusting state that vandals have put us,” he said.
He appealed to the government to come to the aid of the community by returning power supply to the area.
“It is pathetic that we have been in this laughable state in the past six years. People from neighbouring Benin Republic have continually mocked us because while we have remained in darkness all these years, they have been enjoying un-interrupted power supply. Can you beat that?
“The Federal Government makes a huge income from this border and should not for any reasons neglect it in the area of providing basic infrastructure for the people. On behalf of my people, I want to appeal that government should expedite action in returning power supply to the area and also put measures in place to check the activities of vandals who are always bent on sabotaging projects that are meant for common good.”
