Mokwa to Bida was pure bliss! Smooth roads, with enough curves to keep one busy and little traffic to worry about. My target in Bida was the Federal Polytechnic, I did my national service there 30 years ago.
Mechanical and Electrical Engineering Departments at Federal Polytechnic, Bida
Once in a while, you get pleasantly surprised, not a normal occurrence in Nigeria but this was one of those. The school was bigger, neater and hopefully better. I stayed longer than planned, going around the Mechanical Engineering department, talking to students and lecturers and poke-nosing into the labs and workshops.
School tour over, I headed over to Pategi to cross into Kwara state. Summary- 42 km took slightly over 3 hours! and to use the ferry, I had to pay for 10 cars! For a ferry that takes a maximum of 4 cars, long story…
With very low cash reserves, it was a relief to get money from the ATM at Pategi Union bank, then I headed off to Egbe. The usual story of how bad the road was, I was advised to head first to Ilorin then use another route to Egbe. That was some detour, doing 320km as against a direct route of 80km.
Well, I spent 4 hours on the route and if I had an alternative or saw a village, I may have stopped. All I could think of was that people have to pass through this as their normal route.
And it started raining just as the sun went down! The last 10k was so so, but we got into Egbe in one piece, found a hotel and started looking for food! No camping this time.
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