Ilesa

Ilesa (also spelt Ilesha) is a city with a population of 371,000 in Osun State, South West Nigeria. It lies at an intersection of roads leading to Ile Ife, Akure and Osogbo. It is the headquarters of Ijeshaland and has the largest township.

Understand
Ilesa was founded in 12th century by Owaluse, a grandson of Ajibokun Ajaka Owa Obokun Onida Arara, a descendant of Oduduwa, the progenitor of the Yoruba race. Ilesa is the largest town and the capital of Ijesha (Ijesa) kingdom in Osun State.

By bus
Several bus terminals are scattered around the area. Two major ones are Ojota and Oshodi, which is often called Motor Park. The fare from Lagos is about ₦3,000 and the journey lasts 4 hours.

By car
This option helps in management of time if you are able to bear the traffic on the expressway and the constant delays. The journey saves you a good hour as against the bus ride. Estimated journey is around 3 hours.

By plane
The possibility of going by air is not limited to one location. The options of Lagos via Ibadan Airport to Ilesha, Lagos via Ilorin Airport to Ilesha and Lagos via Akure to Ilesa are all available.

By train
Ilesa by train from the terminus at Iddo through Ibadan happens twice a week and the option via Osogbo, once a week. The fare depends on the class, with third to first ranging from ₦2,500-6,000

By taxi
Taxis are safe and the drivers are courteous. Prices vary from ₦70-100

See




Eat




Connect
For most locations in Ilesa, you would most likely find coverage of the 2G/3G/4G mobile networks. Signal strength might diminish further away from the town center, and you might occasionally experience network outage for all or some of the mobile phone service providers in the remote areas of the town. Different networks tend to be more stable and reliable in different locations of the town at different times.

MTN, 9Mobile, Airtel (Zain) and GLO are all available service providers. So if you are planning a visit to Ilesa, like you would do for many other places in Nigeria, you should probably consider having multiple SIM cards, preferably for all the mobile service providers, since you can't tell which will be more stable and reliable at a time in your location during your visit. And if you will risk not having any of them, you might be better off not risking the MTN network, because, from indications, it seem to perform well than the others, though its rates may be high and its offers and services might be stringent, but you are less likely to be concerned of erratic voice and data connection compared to others.

Airtel is another service provider which is fairly satisfactory for all you might need to connect to the world, including rates and network reliability. Of course, Glo (or Globacom) boasts of fast network speed for internet browsing activities, only that you might not be able to enjoy the privilege in some locations. And 9Mobile (formerly Etisalat) usually also performs well in internet browsing speed too but with locational limitations as well, plus data rate is fairly higher.

Go next

 * Ile Ife
 * Osogbo
 * Gbongan
 * Akure
 * Ibadan
 * Lagos