The people of Ezza-Effium in Ohaukwu local government area of Ebonyi State have rejected the peace agreement brokered by the peace committee set up by Governor Francis Nwifuru and headed by Bishop Emeritus of the Catholic Diocese of Abakaliki, Bishop Michael Okoro (rtd).
Governor Nwifuru had constituted the committee to end the intractable bloody three-year-old war in Effium community which left hundreds of people dead, maimed and others with varying degrees of injuries while properties worth millions of naira were also destroyed in a circus of violence.
The Daily Crucible reports that when the communal crisis began three years ago, during the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari at the Centre and Mr. Dave Umahi, who is now Works Minister in President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Government, as Governor in the state at the time, some Indigenes had petitioned the Federal Government (FG), Inspector-General of Police, Chief of Defence Staff, National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Amnesty International, Chief of Army Staff, Director of Department of State Services (DSS), and Office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) then, urging them to take decisive actions to restore peace and normalcy in the troubled community.
The petition which bore March 31, 2021 date urged the then President Muhammadu Buhari to deploy professional security agents to forestall further genocide against members of the community.
That petition reads in part:”The crisis has remained unabated due to the various salient reasons including estrangement, political, marginalization, denial of other social-cultural rights/entitlements against Ezza people by the Ufiom people largely because their son, Hon. Clement Omekannaya Odah emerged the Executive Chairman of Ohaukwu council.
“This is not withstanding that the Ezzas compose not less than 80% of Effium autonomous community in Ohaukwu LGA, Ebonyi state. Over five hundred Effium indigenes of Ezza extraction has been killed and their properties worth billions of naira looted/destroyed by the ufiom people. For avoidance of doubt, in the present unexpected crisis, we the Ezzas have remained under attack by various combined groups.”
However, in a bid to address the crisis, the current Governor, Mr. Nwaifuru, set up the peace committee which recently submitted its report but the Ezza-Effium people rejected the white paper submitted by the Bishop Emeritus, alleging that portions of it infringed on their fundamental human rights.
The Daily Crucible reports further that the people of Effium and Ezza-Effium in the local government have been at each other’s throats since 2021 with indigenes, non-indigenes and security operatives brutally kìlled by combatants of the two feuding communities.
In rejecting the peace pact, the people under the umbrella of Ezza-Effuim Consultative Assembly in a statement signed by the chairman, Chief Aligwe Chukwuma and secretary, Dr Bernard Orichi, claimed, some of their stakeholders were compelled by the state government to sign the pact, which they described as a recipe for another apartheid regime in the 21st century.
They claimed the white paper was against the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria which gives every Nigerian right to live anywhere in the country.
They wondered why they were described by the white paper as tenants in Effium community. “The White paper is completely unacceptable to us, the aspect of the white paper that barred us from producing a traditional ruler of Effium community when we have been doing that for long is unacceptable.
“The recommendations of Bishop Okoro’s Peace Panel and its implementation could better be described as apartheid. The report which erroneously posited Ezza-Effium people, who have lived in their God given community since time immemorial, as tenants, is a malicious and misleading report orchestrated by supposed Men of God.
“What an unprofessional and disreputable contradiction. It is rather ridiculous that we are now regarded as tenants by the purported Peace Pact document, whereas the Uffioms, who are non-Igbo speaking, let alone of Ebonyi State origin, are now described as ‘landlord’ by the same Peace Pact document.
“This is wrong, in fact and law, and a calculated, organized decimation and diminution of Ezza-Effium personality in particular, and Ezza people in general.
“We are simply accommodative and in keeping with the provisions of 1999 Constitution of Nigeria (as amended) which gave all of us equal rights to citizenship.
“We Ezza-Effium people, therefore, reject, in its totality, any Peace Pact or White Paper that tends to deprive us of any of our constitutional rights and privileges in Effium community, inclusive of the rights over our entitlements, freedoms, life and property,” the group said.
