Twenty years ago, no one would have believed that Oba would become a city like it is today. Some twenty years ago, people started buying lands in Oba, and it today became a gateway city, sitting just adjacent to Onitsha. The majority of people buying these lands weren’t indigenes of Oba. But I am not here to inform you how beautiful Oba has become; I am here to inform you that indigenes of Oba have become terror to their fellow Igbo people. When I say terror, I mean every bit of it.
Since development hit Oba by surprise, most of their youths, backed by some older people, have become wolves unto their fellow Igbo people. They have become Fulani unto their brothers from other communities and states who simply came to live among the Oba people. Oba people felt they had struck a goldmine. They now sell lands and resell them to another. They are now a government of their own, stopping buildings from being erected on lands they sold to people.
Oba Youths went to an estate in Oba and destroyed houses under construction. They said they must be paid some levies before construction can start on lands they have already sold. You might think they are doing this to non-Igbo people. No, all their victims are Igbo people. If you are Igbo and you don’t condemn what the Oba people are doing, then you are inhuman. They even stabbed one Oba indigene for standing in defence of the non-indigenes of Oba that came in the spirit of Akuruo ụlọ to help in developing Oba. They brag about having money for the case. They intimidated the person they stabbed, informing him that they didn’t mind dishing out 10 million for the case should he decide to go to the police.
The truth is that the Oba people are divided in this. Some people are against this mădness. A WhatsApp voice note from the Mgbo Youth WhatsApp group suggests that the Youth President is totally against what his people are doing. This means that this is a gang of people who want to bring terror to our people, to sell the fake narrative that Igbo people don’t love themselves. All this is because of selfishness and greed.
We are bringing this to the public to tell these people attacking people in Oba that this behaviour is anti-Igbo. They must know that thousands of Oba people are living outside Oba. Most of them are landlords elsewhere and no one is molesting them. You must know that without these people coming to build houses, schools, churches, banks, hotels, etc Oba, Oba won’t be developed. Why, then, are you all trying to make life difficult for your brothers? That development has come to your community doesn’t mean all of you will stop working, thinking that those building houses in Oba will continue to pay them one revenue or the other.
Governor Soludo must look into what is happening in Oba and arrest those involved. You can’t sell your land and get it back again or come back to collect ransom. We have been hearing these behaviours outside Igbo land. It shouldn’t happen here.
Written by Ekere Ọrụ Eke
The Eagle Eye
