Orire: The Graveyard Of An Innocent Teacher

By Kunle Awosiyan

In 2014, in search of tantalite and other precious stones, I committed several Sundays to a long and arduous journey from Lagos to Ipapo, an agrarian community in Oyo State.

To the south of Ipapo lie communities such as Komu, Otu and Saki. To the west are Iganna, Ago-Are and Iwere-Ile. Together with towns like Igboho and Igbeti, they form part of the vast Oke-Ogun region.

These communities are bordered by the expansive Old Oyo National Park , a once-pristine forest reserve that has now become a dangerous corridor for bandits and criminal syndicates.

My search for precious stones took me from Iwere-Ile deep into a place ominously called “Abuja.” This is not Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory, but a dense forest settlement named by herders who inhabit the area.

The journey required booking a motorcycle a day in advance. I had spent the previous night in Iwere-Ile before setting out at dawn with two geologists from Federal University of Technology Akure.

Their assignment was to locate the bed of the Oyan Dam hidden within the forest. Mine was to document the nature of precious stones embedded in the surrounding rock formations.

It was a dangerous expedition.There was no visible presence of government authority.

After more than two hours of navigating rough forest tracks, we were suddenly intercepted by armed herders who demanded to know our mission. We explained ourselves and were escorted to their leader.

He was an elderly man, seated calmly on a mat spread across a raised pavement.We mentioned a local hunter from Iwere-Ile, Baba Segun, who lived among them and had instructed us to come that day.

The Fulani leader informed us that Baba Segun had gone hunting and that we could not proceed until his return.

As we waited, I prayed silently.An hour later, he appeared.

He eventually led us to the bed of Oyan Dam, where the geologists conducted their tests and collected samples.

But what struck me most was not the scientific work, it was the reality of who controlled that forest.

Apart from Baba Segun, there was not a single Yoruba resident in sight.The forest was dominated entirely by Fulani herders.

Their settlements stretched across the expanse, with thousands of cattle grazing freely. Makeshift shelters dotted the landscape. Families lived, reproduced and expanded there.

They owned the territory in every practical sense. Beyond cattle rearing, illegal mining flourished unchecked.Government regulation was almost nonexistent.

And where illegality thrives, violence follows.For years, local communities have been forced to retreat indoors whenever armed illegal miners arrive.

It was widely understood that foreign buyers waited for these precious stones. Many allegedly supplied weapons to miners to protect their operations and suppress resistance.

The Old Oyo National Park stretches across Oyo and shares boundaries with Kwara State and Osun State.

This vast and poorly monitored terrain provides easy mobility for criminal elements. From there, movement into Niger State and beyond is possible without detection.

Many of those once engaged solely in illegal mining have evolved into full-scale bandits. Without proper mining regulation and modern oversight, desperate opportunists have found kidnapping to be a more lucrative enterprise.

Armed with increasingly sophisticated weapons, they now shed innocent blood with terrifying ease.

The abduction of school teachers and pupils in Orire and the eventual killing of an innocent teacher in the Ogbomoso axis is not an isolated tragedy.

It is the consequence of years of neglect.It is the inevitable outcome of an unregulated park left vulnerable to criminal occupation.

My journey into the forests of Iwere-Ile over a decade ago revealed what was already brewing.

The warning signs were there. The bandits had mastered the routes, understood the terrain, and moved through the woods with ease, crossing state boundaries undetected.

The recent abductions did not happen overnight.They were carefully orchestrated by criminals who have long made the forest their operational base.

These men move in convoys and are constantly mobile, making conventional pursuit difficult.

Even if government deploys battalions of soldiers into these forests, victory will remain elusive unless those forces possess intimate knowledge of the terrain.The solution to banditry cannot remain conventional.

This is the time for sophisticated surveillance, coordinated intelligence gathering, technological monitoring, and comprehensive regulation of illegal mining activities.

Anything less will only guarantee more graves for innocent Nigerians. And more teachers buried before their time.

Kunle Awosiyan writes about his experience inside Old Oyo National Park