Investigative journalist ‘Fisayo Soyombo attempted to smuggle not one or two but 100 bags of rice from the Republic of Benin into Nigeria.
FIJ
Following repeated complaints about the porosity of Nigeria’s borders, investigative journalist ‘Fisayo Soyombo attempted to illegally import not one or two but 100 bags of rice from the Republic of Benin into Nigeria. He succeeded without the faintest security resistance, working with information from greedy Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) bosses who betrayed patrol teams by updating smugglers on their colleagues’ itinerary and the days and times when the roads were free, and daredevil smugglers with insider knowledge of the forests, the roads and Customs officers.
“This is a dangerous journey; I would not advise you to embark on it,” Jide*, my newfound smuggler-acquaintance, whispers to me.
I have heard variants of that statement several times in the past decade, most notably in 2013 when I investigated the brutality of ethnocentric killings in the villages of Plateau, in 2016 when I investigated the abandonment of Nigerian soldiers injured on the battlefield with Boko Haram, in 2018 when I drove the equivalent of a stolen vehicle from Abuja to Lagos and back, and in 2019 when I went undercover at a police station and a prison to track corruption and malfeasance in the criminal justice system. I did not make an about-face in each of those situations; why should I, now?
WHEN BULLETS PIERCED THROUGH VOODOO
But Jide should know better. He and his friend were in that forest bordering Benin Republic and Ogun State just two months earlier when Customs officers fired gunshots at both of them. While Jide was lucky to escape after ditching his motorcycle and diving into a ditch, his voodoo-fortified, overconfident friend refrained from immediately taking flight. He was hit by bullets from the rear and died instantly, leaving behind a young wife and two children, one a toddler. The late smuggler himself was young; he was only 26.
“Well, we still have to go,” I answer Jide, much to his bemusement. “That, or my business partner and I pull out of this deal.”
Not wanting to lose the oncoming windfall, he accepts defeat in his attempts to dissuade me.
HOW THE STORY STARTED
One young Nigerian had complained to me about the porosity of the country’s borders and the attendant insecurity in Ilaro, a small town of roughly 60,000 people once famed for its timber industry, located some 50km from Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital. Off I set to Ilaro, where, after five days of embedding myself in the local environment, I succeed in finding ‘someone who knows someone’ who links me to Jide. He would in turn connect me to Alaba*, a sturdily-built twenty-something-year-old smuggler who walked with a swagger and spoke not only with surefootedness but aggression. And although he never admitted it throughout the duration of our partnership, Alaba carried himself with the haughtiness of someone with metaphysical fortification. Overall, he struck me as one with a get-rich-or-die-trying mentality.
After negotiating the terms in Oja-Odan, a trading town in Yewa North LGA of Ogun State, Alaba agrees to lead my quest to import 5000 kg bags of rice through the backdoor. To kick-start the process, he introduces me to Bose Adeleke, a Yoruba woman who agrees to sell me 100 bags of rice for N2,490,000. Date: November 15, 2022.
The following day, Jide and I meet up in Ilaro, a town renowned among smugglers for its unique location and landscape, for the two-hour ride through Olorulekan, Ebute, Oja-Odan and Ologiri to Adja-Ouèrè, a trading town in the Plateau Department of south-eastern Benin Republic. Our journey out of Ilaro takes us through the entryway to IBD International Hotels, Ilaro, well-known by all and sundry to have been built with proceeds of smuggling.
