Some shops at Odo-Ori Market in the Iwo Local Government Area of Osun State were destroyed by a rainstorm that occurred in the community on Wednesday evening.

The market opens daily for trading in raw food materials and farm products. It also serves as a hub where long-distance traders from other states, including Oyo and Lagos states, get food items.

Strong winds that preceded the actual rain forcefully stripped a block of ten shops with foodstuff businesses off its roof and landed it on top of shops and kiosks on the other side.

READ ALSO: How Former Lawmaker Akintayo Amere ‘Sold’ Constituency Project After Leaving Office

The Monday rainfall was one of the few rainfalls in Iwo since January. According to Hassanat Agbaje, a student of the Federal College of Education located in the town, the rain started around 6 pm and did not stop until after 8 pm.

“The rain began with a heavy wave that lasted about 30 minutes,” said Agbaje.

“The shop owners had left the market for their homes in preparation to break their fasting when the downpour occurred. They probably would have been in their shops when the roof was lifted off completely.”

When Agbaje visited the place on Thursday, she witnessed some of the shop owners bitterly lamenting their losses.

“The shop owners had mixed feelings. A woman was crying profusely, wondering how she would get money to fix her shop and recover her losses while some others were consoling her. They were asking her to be thankful that no one was injured and that she was not the only one affected by the damage,” she told FIJ.

Some of the blocks of shops at the market were old and appeared structurally defective.

YEARLY DESTRUCTIONS

Destruction by rain has almost become a yearly phenomenon in the town. At the beginning of each year, businesses and residential facilities suffer from the consequences of rainstorms.

In May 2019, several houses, business places and schools in some parts of the town were damaged by a rainstorm. Then, Oba Abdulrasheed Akanbi, the Oluwo of Iwoland, facilitated the re-roofing of some of the dwellings.

In March of 2021, the weather stuck again. Some structures were damaged and their owners, including elderly citizens, cried out for help.

Adelere Oriolowo, a senator representing Osun West Senatorial District at the time, helped some affected families out by re-shingling some houses at Saade’s Compound in Feesu.

Iwo equally witnessed another rain-facilitated destruction in February 2024. Public and private facilities, including electricity poles, were damaged.

Oladipupo Sefiu, a media aide to Moshood Kabiru Adekunle, a former caretaker chairman of the Iwo Local Government, told FIJ on Thursday that his boss liaised with the Ibadan office of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) for the affected residents to get some humanitarian assistance then.

“I documented the affected buildings and profiled the victims at the time. I then submitted our report alongside the pictorial evidence to the Osun State Emergency Management Agency (OSEMA) and OSEMA forwarded it to NEMA. Subsequently, we went to Ibadan, Oyo State, to carry food items and clothes the agency provided,” Sefiu said.

“We distributed the materials to the victims. NEMA also promised to donate rooting materials to the homeowners but it had not fulfilled this promise when our tenure ended.

“We could not complete the distribution before leaving office. But some government workers continued and concluded it.”

READ ALSO: How Ex-Lawmaker Akintayo Amere Diverted Constituency Project

FIJ requested information about the unfulfilled pledge from Ashiat Muhammed, a NEMA staff interfacing with the community at the time, on Thursday, but she declined to comment.

Muhammed said she had no authority to speak on the matter. She said only the agency’s coordinator in Oyo State could talk with FIJ but she refused to share the coordinator’s phone number.

Efforts to get the coordinator’s contact details from independent sources were unsuccessful at press time.