By Temitope Muhideen (Convydence)
For too long, Kwara has served as a theatre for press releases. The PDP hurls a stone, the APC hurls one in return. The APC posts footage of a freshly tarred road; the PDP posts an older clip of that same road in disrepair. The cycle continues. Meanwhile, the true adversaries of Kwara possess no party cards. They move under cover of darkness. They conceal themselves in forests. They are indifferent to whether you align with red or green. Their interest lies solely in the vulnerability of our communities.
Let us speak plainly and with equity. Both sides have treated Kwara more as a rhetorical device than as a construction site. The opposition expends energy cataloguing every pothole and every delay. The government expends energy defending every delay and dismissing every criticism. Both are occasionally correct. Both are frequently wrong. Yet Kwarans have grown weary of the distinction between right and wrong when nothing materializes on their street.
These attacks must end, because Kwara is hemorrhaging in places politics seldom reaches.
In Kwara North, insecurity has transitioned from rumor to routine. In Patigi, farmers now assess risk before they assess profit. The planting season is no longer governed by rainfall; it is governed by the likelihood that bandits will descend upon the Borgu axis in Baruteen and Kaiama. In Edu, riverine communities endure the anxiety that accompanies porous borders and the remoteness of security posts. In Baruten and Kaiama, proximity to the Niger and Benin Republics, coupled with the expanse of Kainji National Park, has transformed our frontiers into corridors for kidnappers, banditry and arsonists . A teacher posted to a village in Baruteen does not merely contemplate lesson plans; she contemplates the road leading there and whether she will have network coverage to summon assistance when the unexpected happen. This is not politics. This is survival. No press release issued from Ilorin can console a mother who has not heard from her son in three days.
Kwara South has not been spared. While headlines concentrate on the North, the South is quietly forfeiting their communities, towns and villages in remote areas of Ifelodun, Isin, Oke Ero and Ekiti Local Government Areas are now ghost towns. Bandits and kidnappers are now infiltrating towns that once slept with doors ajar. The roads linking Offa, Erin-Ile, Ipee, and Share are in deplorable condition, and deteriorated roads constitute more than an economic impediment. They constitute a security threat. When security vehicles cannot respond swiftly, criminals respond more swiftly. When students endure hours on broken roads to reach school, they arrive exhausted and vulnerable. When traders cannot transport goods, desperation intensifies, and desperation becomes a recruiter for crime.
Even in Ilorin, the capital that ought to be the safest enclave, we witness an increase in phone snatching, nocturnal assaults, cultists violence and neighborhoods compelled to organize vigilante patrols because confidence in official response has eroded. Electricity is likewise a security concern. Areas deprived of power for days become fertile ground for theft. The woman vending akara by the roadside closes early not from fatigue, but because darkness carries a cost.
Both parties have answers on paper. PDP will remind you of years in power, of projects started, of structures built. APC will remind you of the mandate given in 2019, of efforts to reset, of budgets signed. Both stories are part of Kwara’s history. But Kwara’s present is asking a different question: if you’ve both been part of this story, why are our farms still unsafe and our roads still broken?
The hostility between PDP and APC has fostered a dangerous delusion that if one side is defeated, Kwara triumphs. That is false. Should the PDP prevail and farms remain abandoned, Kwara loses. Should the APC remain in office and clinics remain empty, Kwara loses. We have confused party victory with the victory of the people for far too long.
This moment demands balance. To the opposition: criticize, by all means, but present solutions tailored specifically to Kwara North and Kwara South. Do not merely declare that insecurity is escalating. Explain how you will secure the Kainji axis through community policing and technology. Explain how you will render the Offa-Erinle road safe for nocturnal travel. Explain how you will persuade teachers to accept postings in Kaiama without apprehension. Kwara does not require another inventory of what is wrong. It requires a blueprint for what follows.
To those in government: governance entails listening even when the voice is adversarial. It entails traveling to Baruten when no cameras are present. It entails repairing the Share-Igbaja road not because an election approaches, but because a pregnant woman may require it at two in the morning. It entails regarding rural electrification as a security initiative, not merely an energy initiative. Light retains people at home. Light sustains businesses. Light signals to criminals that a community is vigilant.
And to both: cease pretending that Kwara’s challenges are partisan. Insecurity in Baruten does not verify voter registration. A collapsed bridge in Ekiti Local Government Area does not inquire about your allegiance in 2023. Our geography, our borders, our poverty, our youth unemployment — these are Kwara’s problems. They require Kwara’s solutions.
Consider the possibility of a truce on three imperatives: securing the border communities of Kwara North, rehabilitating critical roads in Kwara South that serve as escape routes for criminals, and generating genuine employment so that our youth cease to constitute the most accessible recruitment pool for gangs. You may continue to debate ideology. You may continue to campaign vigorously. But on those three matters, collaborate as though the house is ablaze, because it is. Only fools debate ownership of the bucket while the roof burns.
Kwara has produced Nigeria’s finest minds. We possess the land, the rivers, the border trade, and young people equipped with phones and ideas. What we lack is time. Each season a farmer forgoes planting represents food insecurity for the following year. Each term a child absents himself from school due to fear represents a future forfeited. Each month a road remains impassable represents another business shuttered and another youth departed.
The 2027 elections will arrive with fanfare and promises. Governance, however, consists of the quiet labor between elections. History will not recall who prevailed in online disputes. History will recall who rendered it safe for a farmer in Patigi to cultivate without fear. Who enabled a nurse in Share to provide treatment without referral. Who made it ordinary for a student in Offa to read at night without the din of a generator.
Kwara does not require perfect leaders. It requires present leaders. Leaders who appear in Kaiama during crises, not solely in Ilorin for rallies. Leaders who can articulate a security strategy with no confusion. Leaders who recognize that the most compelling campaign poster is a community that feels secure and a road that functions.
Therefore, let the attacks subside. Let the insults cease. Let Kwara breathe. For if we persist in combating one another while criminals and poverty traverse our land unimpeded, we shall all be defeated. And Kwara, with its legacy of scholarship and resilience, deserves far better than collective defeat.
Temitope Muhideen is the publisher of Confidence News Nigeria and a Member of Greenfield Library Limited, Atlanta Georgia
