I visited my village and 80% of the buildings and structures there weren't in existence as of 2007. As a matter of fact, there were bushes covering almost both sides of the entire road that led to my family house.
Our people hardly farm so almost everywhere was covered with bushes and there were scanty buildings.
Fast forward to 2015, almost every family started clearing their abandoned lands and erecting structures. The last I visited in September this year, everywhere have been covered. I couldn't find a single empty land along the road to my family house.
The most shocking part was to see that a plot of land was sold for 15 million. This was something that cost less than 200k as of 2007.
But my concern is not about the buildings and the current cost of land. What I tried to understand was why all those places were left unoccupied despite the fact that millions of people have existed in my community before my own generation.
With the rate at which they married and their polygamy culture, my grandfather wouldn't have more than 5 plots of lands all to himself.
While I was brainstorming to know why I found lots of empty properties while growing up, I remembered stories about the civil war and how Onitsha and it's environs were bombed to dust with millions of our people killed.
So what it means is that my grandfather and the few survivors started building from scratch and that was why the entire places were scanty.
It still drew my attention to the fact that there are places currently like that in 2026 as a result of Fulani bandits invasion and BokoHaram attacks. I saw a video showing an empty community in Kwara state and from experience and how scanty my community was, I understand the impact of conflicts.
Despite the fact that our community is booming now, my prayer is that there will never be a time when millions of people will disappear abandoning their houses only for a few to return and start life afresh. Let our kids not have similar experiences like us who spent most of our holidays playing inside the bushes instead of amusement parks and beautiful towers
