Erin-Ile Has Not Evolved -By Hussein Adegoke

The tension between Offa and Erin-Ile communities has been a needless age-long phenomenon. For one naughty joke or the other, or for two individuals being at loggerheads, war would break out and lives and properties would be put to destruction. The first time I witnessed such feudal conflict was in 2006 when I was in the junior secondary school. Then, I saw gory and sordid details of rolling heads, burnt properties and I heard unspeakable accounts of voodoo practices. Erin-ile, as usually, had begun the war. They took Offa by surprises when, prior to the time they struck, they convened a clannish meeting and had mapped out a way of ‘exterminating’—oh! sorry, pardon my exaggerations—or of causing mayhem in Offa.

They had forewarned all their kinsmen that were, at the time, resident in Offa to flee ahead of the imminent war they had planned to launch. I could remember a tenant in my Grandmother’s apartment then, where I was staying put, ‘Baba Mufuli’, who was a carpenter and was from Erin-Ile fleeing from us prior to the incident. No one had sniffed a thing until after the war when we pitched reasons for the sudden disappearance of a man who could have barely been absent from home for three nights. In the middle of the war when Offa would retaliate their losses, we saw men trooping into my Grandma’s residence asking of where Baba Mufuli resided. They had their information correctly and so, had hoped to tear down the dwelling belonging to their war opponent within the town. They reached out for the door but to the utter consternation of everyone present, it was nailed to every point and was grossly inaccessible.

It was apparent that that carpenter of a tenant, Baba Mufuli, knew exactly or had, at least, foreseen how the war would pan out. He had rightly envisaged how his home would become checked into as the battle rises to its summit. Since it was impossible for him to move his belongings out without giving us, his compound mates, an inkling into the imminent war, he resorted into using his dexterity in carpentry to secure his belongings. But lo! When the door was torn down and all properties met therein—literally, the life investments of an erring conspiratorial enemy posing to be a friend—were moved out, I saw many items go up in flames, and to come down to ashes in the twinkle of an eye. Well, till date, Baba Mufuli has not returned. Perhaps, words had reached him and his wife and his three underlings (as of the time), all of whom had fled ahead of a war they organized, that nothing was left of what they had gathered. All of these are nothing other than the consequences of a needless war. They are the results of mutual rivalry, resentment and hostility.

In the successive wave of that carnage, just in seven years thereafter, precisely on February 6, 2013, Alhaji Bukola Lawal, Chairman and CEO of Adlag Hotel, was murdered in cold blood by Erin-Ile bandits. Offa was again shaken to the ground as town residents were again taken by surprises. Alhaji Bukola was brutally mutilated and eyewitnesses had recounted that the hotelier never fled as the armed miscreants accosted him. It was intuited that he had full confidence in his personality and in the good ties he had with the people of Erin-ile. But meanwhile, in that episode of the fracas, the hotelier was brought down, his investment was razed down and, inter alia, the Federal Polytechnic, Offa, had suspended its activities. Several people were arrested including one notorious member of NURTW who resided in Osogbo but had led Erin-Ile bandits to Offa.

On the 4th of March, 2021, the most recent communal clash between the two communities had broken out. It was gathered that the immediate cause of the feud was the ‘garages’ that some members of the two communities had situated at barely 1km away from each other. What has typified this occurrence—aside from the casualties claimed, properties destroyed and the imposed curfew—is the reluctance of Erin-Ile’s kingship to cede fight and broker peace in the face of terror. It was recounted that the kingship had refused to append his signature on a drafted peace resolution agreement just in time.

The age-long rift between the two communities, like this writer had earlier asserted, is quite needless. For two reasons, I see the insurrection of the people of Erin-ile as tactless, clueless, and needless. One, we are in a development age where orthodox claims to any borderland would but only impede upward mobility within a society. Let’s take the capital city of Ilorin for an instance. The lots of places that we know today as bearing the nomenclature of “Ilorin” used to be only neighbouring towns to the capital city. Places like Fate, Tanke Bubu, Galiki etc. that have now become environs within Ilorin were townships outside of Ilorin. That they were “reduced” to their new statuses, as it might be avowed in some quarters, is only a subject of individual discernment. If Tanke had never worked in cooperation with the Ilorin of yesteryears, would the University of Ilorin have ever been theirs to lay claims to? Now, with the influx of trade, students and essentials into Tanke Bubu, consequent upon the location of Unilorin on its spot, Tanke is today competing with its patron in terms of growth. This is a parable that Erin-ile has refused to take cues from. It is always a win-win situation for the bigger town and the growing one when both parties come in agreement over a borderland.

Secondly, Erin-ile has only few infrastructures when compared to Offa. Residents within the community troop into Offa to participate in the traditional four-market-day commercial activity within Offa as all neighbouring towns to Offa would always do. People would come in their numbers to transact their businesses and indigenes of Erin-Ile are never exempted. So, introspectively, at whose peril would enmity be if both communities sever ties and mutual relations? Erin-ile could barely lay claims to a functional banking system and Offa serves them in this regard as much as the latter does as a linkage between the former and the state capital (and invariably, the north). The same cannot be said of Erin-ile and towns down South; there are, of course, other access routes to Osogbo. You know, this writer was at Offa recently and he kept wondering how impossible it was for Erin-ile to deny all road commuters access through their land in the face of the burning rift. Again, to whose jeopardy would such act be if it were to be repelled? The norm in this century is that we allow those who have been elevated to know their peace so that we can pace after them and not regress. But would Erin-Ile ever listen?

I looked at this communal war and observed the social construction of man. I came to the realization of the despicability of man’s disposition to envy the success of another, his intimate friend, but would rather go in a long-arm embrace of an unknown distant personality. When Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th American President, I lost count of Nigerian friends who sent forth their unsolicited letters of felicity. Those are strange messages that Biden may never receive how much more, come to read and appreciate. But in some mutual acquaintances who have been granted some study visas or had given birth to wonderful kids or had built edifices that compete with the Trump Towers, men would find hostility, ill luck and wars to launch. We see reproaching enemies in friends who, for being triumphant over life, have derided us and must pay duly with their eyes. Pray! Let old things pass! It’s 2021; let Offa and Erin-ile see a new beginning!