Posted by Lekan Bilesanmi on
My name is Sadiku Odugbemi. I am 67 years old. The Lissa people came into being through two brothers who migrated from Abeokuta. That was how they settled here and before they knew it, people started coming before it became what it is now.
My name is Sadiku Odugbemi. I am 67 years old. The Lissa people came into being through two brothers who migrated from Abeokuta. That was how they settled here and before they knew it, people started coming before it became what it is now. I became the Baale after my elder brother's death. It was my father that was the Baale but shortly after his death, my elder brother took over from where he stopped and he was on the throne for more than 10 years before he died. I don't know how many houses that make up the village. We don't have electricity here. We have been with this problem of electricity for sometime now. In fact, the NEPA people disappeared three days after they brought some cable wires and since then, nothing has happened. We had to take money which was borrowed to the NEPA people before the cable wires could be brought here and that was the only thing they did before they disappeared. There are quite a number of other villages that are still in darkness, it is the same fate we are all suffering. We are all farmers here. That is the main occupation here.
Before the tragic incident, we were suffering here. Before now, the road to this village was un-motorable especially when it rains. At a point, the only thing that ply the road was Okada and they would charge you as much as N400 just from the outskirts to the village. It was that bad. The vehicles that were coming into the village were coming every five days and that is when we are taking our produce to the market. They could not come every day because apart from the fact that it is expensive, the vehicles, if not strong, ended up even worse than they were before they came here. But the tragic incident, I must say, has brought good tidings to this village. I feel sad over what happened, nobody prayed for that kind of disaster and I pray for the souls of the departed to rest in peace. You will not believe that Governor Gbenga Daniel, who we have only been seeing in newspapers particularly during elections, came down here. On a good day, what would he be looking for here but he has been coming here consistently since the incident happened.
There was a time we all contributed N25,000 so that this road could be graded but it is always abandoned shortly after they started. So we got fed up with the whole antics and we resigned to fate. But look at what has happened now, without any prompting, the state government has graded the road even the almighty Julius Berger was part of the grading of the road. When the incident happened that Saturday evening, we just returned from the mosque around 7.30.But around 8.45pm, we heard a big bang. There was a little rain. The sound shook everything to its foundation, so we all came out to see what it was and as we came out, we saw fire even though some were saying that it was plane crash, there was little or nothing we could do at that time, the only thing we all decided there and then was to go to the Sango Police Station the next morning to make a formal report which was exactly what we did the following morning around 8 am. We intend to appease the gods of the land because of the tragedy. After all that they (government) wants to do now is over, the Muslims and the Christians will offer prayers at the site of the crash. also, we are going to allow the traditionalists to do their own appeasement, it is very essential that all these are done so that the place can be save for the dwellers and more importantly for farming.