“Everyone ran. Lekan stayed. Now he’s the only name left to answer when the wind calls Owa-Onire.”
When the security team of 100 men from the drone unit, MOPOL, and the Anti-Kidnapping Squad rolled into Owa-Onire (today) they found nothing but silence. No markets, no voices, no children. Just empty compounds, a locked mosque, a quiet church, and one man standing in the middle of it all.
The operation is part of the Inspector General of Police’s push to screen the Kwara South forest belts. Ifelodun, Isin, Oke-Ero, Ekiti LGAs — troops are moving through all of them. But Owa-Onire stopped them cold. A town wiped clean.
The only person left is Lekan, a prince of the town. He calls himself “the landlord” now, and the title fits. The big mansion, the abandoned houses, the mosque, the church — all of it belongs to the crickets and to him.
He didn’t stay out of courage. He stayed because “Bororo’s War” took everyone else. It didn’t start with one attack. Bandits came and came again. Kidnappings became routine. Then they took the Monarch himself and held him in the forest for months until a ransom was paid. After that, the people couldn’t take it anymore. They locked their doors and left. Some went to Okeonigbin. Most just disappeared into somewhere safer.
Owa-Onire isn’t alone. At least 28 communities in Ifelodun LGA are deserted. The same fate has swallowed Oro-Ago, Omugo, Ahun, Oke-Oyan, Owa-Kajola, Owa-Onire, and Oba in Isin LGA. Residents say over 23 villages have been overrun by suspected bandits. Ancestral homes stand empty. Farms rot. Towns become names on a map with no one to say them.
Lekan eats from his farm. That’s how he survives. There’s nowhere to buy food here, nowhere to buy anything. He’s alone with his land and the memory of a town that used to be alive.
The team leader handed him ₦10,000. Lekan took it quietly. He said he’d go to Okeonigbin to buy foodstuffs — the nearest place that still has a market.
He also told them people came into the community last night. He doesn’t know who they were or what they took. He just knows he heard them, and in the morning, nothing had changed. He was still alone.
Visibly disturbed by what they saw, the senior officers from Abuja and Lagos said no Nigerian community should be reduced to this. They described Owa-Onire’s abandonment as a failure that demands immediate action, and pledged to push for sustained security presence and concrete measures that will allow displaced residents to return home without fear.
Credit: Elder Oyin Ajirotutu Zubair
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