Mother!
Where did I come from?
When will I wear long trousers?
Why was my father jailed? – Mtshali Oswald
10th of July, it was noon when I set out. The air was heavy, yet the sun was mildly harsh. The weather seems both temperate and distant. But unbothered about the instability of the atmosphere, I clutched onto my bag and set off without a backward glance. It was on a journey, no one knew anything about. A trip, the first of which I would embark on with family and loved ones, was totally thrown out of the loop. I set the course, hitting the road with all alacrity in me, then boarded the bus heading west. That was towards Nigeria’s border with the Benin Republic, a neighbouring country in the Gulf of Guinea, where my new story led.
By my calculation, it should have been a smooth ride, lasting between four to five hours from Abeokuta. But I was disappointed. We spent more time than expected, no thanks to the armed men in uniform on the road to the border. Pitiably, their loyalty was more to their pockets than it is to the nation.
Checkpoints were endless. At each one, drivers paid in cash or nods to settle later, before we could move. It is as mandatory as non-negotiable. Passengers, too, were not spared. Questions, sometimes irrelevant, sometimes loaded, and always with the risk of delay if one gave the “wrong” answer, were asked.
I was simply a journalist on a story expedition, unfamiliar with the rhythm of this process. At one of the checkpoints, an officer from the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) asked:
“Where are you going?”
“Ipokia,” I replied.
“Where in Ipokia?”
I hesitated. I knew no specific place there, so I said, “I don’t know, I am just going to meet someone.” I thought that would save me. But it did not. It, in fact, landed me into more trouble, one I would require a Good Samaritan to handle.
Hearing my ignorance of my actual destination, the officer frowned. “You don’t know the place, and you dey go Ipokia abi. Come down and call the person.”
Ipokia is a community named after Ipokia Local Government, one of the LGAs under Ogun State. It nestles very close to the Lagos Lagoon and the Benin Republic, and yes, the exact route where smuggled Western rice often passes to Nigeria.
For some years, I have heard stories about how some LGAs under Ogun State are experiencing hardships in terms of basic amenities. Ipokia LGA is among, after Yewa North, Yewa South and some other LGAs under the State.
Having mapped out some communities I would like to visit, I thought starting with the Ipokia community, which is named after Ipokia LGA, would be a better angle for my report. My job was simple: to see firsthand the experience of the residents with the government’s medical infrastructure.
So I was not wrong when I said I was going to Ipokia. The community is the epicentre of other communities and villages I would later visit. But telling this NIS officer just “Ipokia” to him is enough to arouse suspicion.
“Come down, come down,” the officer repeated. “You will call the person you are going to meet. I want to speak with him/her.”
Another delay. I felt a wave of frustration spiral down my spine, but kept it buried under the face of mine that is both calm and collected. I muttered. What business was it of this muscle-flexing officer to know exactly where I was going?
Head bowed.
Unbothered, He brandished his rifle, flipping it backwards, with its sling strapped closely on his left shoulder and the right part of his flat tummy, leaving the sling to double-cross its two burly pectoral muscles on his chest. It was as if he had been specially trained for this moment.
“You would have told him you know the place,” some passengers, who were already tired of the intermittent delay, chorused.
I sighed as the deafening silence bade me sit at this crossroad. I was not willing to reveal my identity, yet unsure who to call to satisfy his suspicion.
What would I say?
Then came Blessing. True to her name, she was the blessing I needed. A student, a fellow passenger, and now my unexpected ally. Sitting very close to Blessing gave me leverage, as we had been interacting since I boarded the bus. Many times, I have always been introverted when I board a bus. You don’t know who is who, so you keep shut. But for some reason I don’t know, I was extremely extroverted to Blessing. Never knew the reason would reveal itself some hours later.
“Do you have anyone I could call in Ipokia to help me out?” I whispered as she approached me, wearing a demeanour garbed in empathy.
“Yes,” she said, but her phone had no network or airtime.
It was at that moment that she stepped forward and told the officer, “We are relatives. We’re going to the same place,” since she had been previously cleared by the officer.
However, his face was hardened. “How come he doesn’t know the place?”
“He’s just coming for the first time,” she replied.
Unconvinced, he moved on to interrogate other passengers, while leaving both I and Blessing standing aloof. Seizing the moment, I handed Blessing my phone and urged her to call the person she had in mind. She stepped aside, dialled, and soon the officer was speaking with the person on the line. That was enough. We were cleared to move.
Much later, we realised the officer knew nothing about Ipokia. His questions had been a bluff, a tactic to delay and intimidate me into paying him a substantial amount of money as an alleged bribe, should I be crossing the border. It is that easy to cross the border, once there are funds and funds. Again, funds!
I later witnessed the unexpected, as despite the strict stop-and-search, bags of rice were still smuggled on motorcycles through Ipokia.
Beyond this, somehow, the circumstance had brought me to Blessing, and I gave her what I call a comely appreciation; gratitude born of solidarity on the frontline. From that moment, we bonded like siblings. After all, what else can we be?
Ipokia: Where cravings for long trousers begin
To reach Ipokia, you must first get to Idiroko. From there, another roughly 45-minute journey takes you deeper, passing through Ago Sasa, to discover Ipokia kingdom, a community, like a village, left behind to sing silently of when it too will wear “long trousers.”
Thanks to South Africa’s Mtshali Oswald, that metaphor still echoes. His 1971 poem, Boy on a Swing, gave the phrase its depth. A child yearning for adulthood, his freedom stifled by apartheid. His three questions: “Where did I come from? When will I wear long trousers? Why is my father jailed?” capture a universal longing, thwarted by forces beyond his control.
Fast forward to 2025, as it was for the fictitious literary boy in the poem, so it is now. Particularly, in Nigeria’s rural communities, the obstacles wear a different face but carry the same weight: poverty, identity crisis, delayed adulthood, translating to dragging development, and political neglect. Sadly, people affected daily long for dignity, but their lives circle in place.
For three years, I have travelled through three of Nigeria’s geo-political zones, meeting communities that all share the same cry. They want to wear long trousers. Here, their long trousers are a basic amenity. Yet year after year, they remain bare, denied the basic amenities of life like schools, road infrastructure and fully furnished and equipped healthcare facilities. Some communities have none at all, still their votes are still collected every election cycle.
It began in 2023 with Gwada in Niger State, where I revealed the government’s unconscious complicity in maternal mortality and the violent underdevelopment of communities, leading residents to become Internally Displaced Persons (IDP). Then, in Kargako, Kaduna State, in 2024, I revealed the acute rate of water crisis several communities face, causing waterborne diseases, despite the former Governor, Nasir El Rufai’s multi-billion naira water project. That year, I also embarked on a four-month investigation, unravelling how the Nigerian President’s Senior Special Assistant on Sustainable Development Goals office awarded over N700m for projects they never executed in communities within Lagos and Ogun States.
And now—Ipokia, in Ogun State, where I had documented how the State Government continues to erect buildings for primary healthcare centres, yet there are no staff, drugs or needed equipment to operate.
I spent one week touring 10 of Ogun State’s 20 local government areas (LGAs). In some communities, their rural condition would shock anyone to believe they still exist in the 21st century. In some, I even spent nights.
Take Ado-Odo/Ota, the very LGA that contributes immensely to Ogun’s internally generated revenue (IGR). From Owode in Yewa South, it takes roughly 20 to 30 minutes across thick bush paths before you reach Ado-Odo. The irony is striking: an LGA so vital to the State’s wealth has a community that would first welcome visitors with a bad road. Then, have its primary health facility beg for my torchlights to see in the dark. Without telling, one would know, here, healthcare tells the same story of woes in the frontline.
Ado/Ota Primary health centres are neither furnished, staffed, nor equipped. Residents confessed they rely on private hospitals, though not everyone can afford them. And more pitiably is the fact that before they could be able to get quality care, they must travel back to Idiroko—often one to two hours on a motorcycle. Some never make it; they die on the road.
This story repeats itself in every community I enter. No clean water. No electricity. No credible healthcare infrastructure. Yet this is Ogun State under Governor Dapo Abiodun, whose administration allocates substantial sums to the health sector, year in, year out.
In Ogun Waterside, a resident told me bluntly: “Government doesn’t often remember us. They only do when they need our vote. After that, they leave.” Her voice carried no bitterness, only a resigned certainty and weight.
I paused. She was right. Back in 2022, when I served as an Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) ad-hoc staff for the election that brought Governor Ademola Adeleke to the Oke-fia office in Osun State. I was posted to a remote village. There was no electricity. No mobile network. Barely 20 houses and maybe 100 residents. Still, we managed to deliver the ballot boxes, set up a polling unit, and people voted. They had fulfilled their duty as citizens. Yet, today, like countless other villages across Nigeria, they remain forgotten—no road, no water, no electricity, no school. The government is yet to devise a strategy to take innovation to them, except for ballots, papers and votes. Same as it is with communities in Osun, also, it is also in Ogun State.
I documented in my reports that if properly managed, Ipokia, Odogbolu (another LGA visited), and Ado-Odo/Ota LGAs have received a significant amount of public funds, a portion of which could have been used to address the needs of the communities, particularly in health facilities.
Since 2016, Ogun Waterside LGA has also received at least N824bn allocation. Under Governor Abiodun alone, precisely from January 2019 to June 2025, the LGA has received N368bn Federal Government Allocation. Yet it has no electricity, thereby collapsing the effectiveness of every sector connected to the need for a power supply in the LGA, including the health sector.
When visited, even the LGA building was more underdeveloped than the entire area surrounding its terrain.
These, among others, joined the litanies of long trousers that rural communities in Nigeria yearn to wear. The question is not how they will wear them, but when.
FRSC Officers and the POS Machine
On my way to Ogun Waterside, another scene struck me. At a drop called RCC, after Itele Market on the Ogun-Ore-Edo expressway, officers of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) stood with a point-of-sale (POS) machine in hand. Alongside them were policemen.
Every vehicle, including cars, buses, and trailers, was stopped. Each driver was compelled to bow in cash or swipe with a card.
Watching them as my vehicle drove by, I asked myself again: when will Nigeria wear long trousers? When will directives be tightened against men in uniform who turn the nation’s highways into toll gates for their pockets? When?
Enoch Oyedibu
Brazen Investigative Journalist with a knack for tracking the grassroots impacts of government procurement, amplifying marginalised stories and contributing to community development. Data | Multimedia | Stories.