Why Exactly Does Chinedum Orji Want To Dispossess Amaokwe Ugba Community Of Their Ancestral Lands? In November 2021, the President-General ...
Why Exactly Does Chinedum Orji Want To Dispossess Amaokwe Ugba Community Of Their Ancestral Lands?
In November 2021, the President-General of Amaokwe Ugba community, Ibeku, Chief Tobias Osukwu raised an alarm on social media, notifying that the Speaker of Abia State House of Assembly, Mr. Chinedum Orji (a.k.a Ikuku) was attempting to assassinate him for opposing the Orji’s attempt to appropriate Amaokwe Ugba’s ancestral lands. In that same publication, Chief Osukwu accused Mr. Chinedum Orji of using a state security operative to assassinate his kinsman and former Personal Assistant, Late John Ndubuka. Chief Tobias warned Mr. Orji to “be ready to face the dare consequences of killing, for it will be your last”.
The allegation that Mr. Chinedum Orji was responsible for the assassination of Late John Ndubuka was later confirmed in December 2021 by the former Attorney-General of Abia State, Chief Ume Kalu who said that he was privy to the evidence that Mr. Chinedum Orji was behind the killing of Late John Ndubuka, and the subsequent attempts to cover up the crime. And as at the moment of penning this article, it has already been over six months since Tobias Osukwu and Ume Kalu made the allegations, and the so-called Ikuku has not yet instituted any court action on “defamation” against his accusers. What is he afraid of? Is he scared that his accusers will expose his atrocities further?
Instead of clearing what ever remained of his tattered name, Chinedum Orji resorted to dispatching some of his loyalists to Chief Tobias Osukwu to compel him to retract his publication and jettison his fight to recover Amaokwe Ugba’s ancestral lands from the Orjis and their land-grabbing collaborators.
Apparently, the venture to subdue Chief Osukwu failed. And, as the President-General, rather than soft-pedal, Osukwu intensified his campaign against the land-grabbing syndicate. This was evident in the daring actions that Amaokwe Ugba people took in April this year, 2022. In late March, information got to Amaokwe Ugba people that some persons had trespassed into the Ụzọ-Ubi land and erected buildings there, not regarding the Umuahia High Court injunction that ordered all parties to stay off the ancestral land while it was deliberating on the land matter. The Community promptly investigated the information and discovered that the Abia State Commissioner for Lands, Dr. Chidi Onwuchuruba was colluding with the land grabbers to covertly sell portions of that land to their friends and business associates, without the consent of the court or that of the community.
As a side note, Dr. Chidi Onwuchuruba (KSM) was a State Liaison Officer during ex-Governor T. A. Orji’s administration, and was only appointed the Commissioner for Lands by Okezie Ikpeazụ’s administration, at the request of Mr. Chinedum Orji. And this is assumeably because the previous Commissioner for Lands, Alhaji Suleiman Ukandu(another henchman from the Orjis) failed to seize the Amaokwe Ugba’s ancestral Ụzọ-Ubi land.
On realising the flagrant show of impunity displayed by the land-grabbing syndicate, the people of Amaokwe Ugba Ibeku Community organised themselves in April, marched into their ancestral Ụzọ-Ubi land and pulled down all the illegal structures the trespassers erected there. Some of the buildings involved, were built by one Ikechukwu Matthew Nwoko who identified himself as a “contractor” and one Pastor Friday Adiele of "Qua Ibo Church" who also identified himself as a lecturer and professional colleague to Dr. Chidi Onwuchuruba at Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike.
It is worthy at this point to note that the former Abia State Governor, T. A. Orji also originates from Amaokwe Ugba Ibeku Community. And one would expect the ex-Governor and his family to be an asset to his said community of origin, but the reality is that unfortunately, the Orji's family has turned out to be worse than a liability and more of an unending nightmare to the Amaokwe Ugba Ibeku Community.
As a matter of fact, the nightmare began from Sen. Orji’s father called “Ọjị”. Mr. Ọjị was not an indigene of Amaokwe Ugba Community, or Ibeku generally. He was from Ohuhu, particularly Umunemeze Nkwoegwu in Ohuhu. This is where the story of how Mr “Ọjị” got to be in Amaokwe Ugba gets unfortunately and regretfully ugly. He was a former slave in Ugba Ibeku who was, luckily for himself, appointed by the British Colonialists as the Warrant Chief over Ugba people despite the people’s protest. Following his appointment as Warrant Chief, “Chief Ọjị”, vented his previously repressed hatred for his captors on his former master’s community through oppression, including using the aegis of the “Crown” to appropriate swathes of land that belonged to the community. Hence, he was widely loathed by members of Ugba Community until his death. A few of his children, despite their family’s history, gradually integrated into Amaokwe Ugba Community and were open-heartedly adopted by the community. However, some of “Chief Oji’s” sons like Ahamefula Orji rarely identified as an integral member of Amaokwe Ugba, Ibeku, but only started doing so when he launched his political career, and merely did so in order to gain acceptability amongst the Ibeku people.
Therefore, from the onset, the Orjis have no legitimate ancestral stake in Ugba Ibeku, but only a brief history marred by wickedness. That wickedness coupled by an apparently inborn avarice, seem to have been passed down to T. A. Orji and down to his own son, Chinedum Orji, and visited on Amaokwe Ugba Community.
#UzoUbiNotForSale
#AmaokweIsNotFeudal
Chinyere Akobundu, Reporting for
Family Writers Press International
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