Activities of land speculators in Okwe, Oshimili South Local Government Area of Delta State have triggered another round of crisis in the state.
A Supreme Court Judgment, suit No. SC/79/2001, delivered in 2006, has led to killings, maiming and bloodshed between Umuezefadia and Oduke villagers.
Trouble, The Eagle online gathered, started after the Supreme Court held that the learned justices of the appellate court were right in holding that exhibit 1-4 in the suit are admissible in Evidence Act and that the learned justices of the Court of Appeal were right when they held that having disposed of the appeal on issue No. 1 to proceed to determine the remaining issues will amount to academic exercise, which was delivered in favour of the three defendants (now respondents) in the matter.
In the crisis that erupted thereafter, four major players in the clash – one Ekenem Nwandu, Emma Agunye Sunday, Adimkpaya Stanley and Ernest Anagor – were not only brutalized but sustained various degrees of matchete cuts.
Prior to the incident, officers and men of the Delta State Police Command arrested four kingpins in connection with the crisis in the Kwale axis of the state.
In the court judgement, Diokpa (Village Head) Francis Onochie, P. D. Ofili, M. O. Osadebe (for themselves and on behalf of the six sub-families, versus Ferguson Odogwu, elder brother to Chief Sunny Odogwu, Felix Waemembu, Ogbuefi Nwamukwu, Ogbogu Nwalupue, Okei Achamba, Nnyemike halim, Clifford Odigwe, Okei Nwanji (for themselves and on behalf of Umuezeafadia sub-family of Umuaji village, Asaba, all joined in the suit.
The Court upheld that it is the duty of an intermediate appellate court to consider and pronounce all issues properly raised before it, except in clearest cases.
The breach of this duty, the court further held, may lead to an order for rehearing in appropriate cases.
But because unsuspecting buyers turned deaf ears to the appeal from the solicitor to the Umuezeafadia family, in a notice signed by Barrister Andy. O. Achugbue and the Village Committee Chairman, Ogbueshi Henry Monu, that persons, companies or organizations that purchases any parcel of land within the family land should visit the family for verification, the crisis assumed a dangerous dimension.
In a forceful attempt to recover their parcel of land from those who refused to turn up for the regularization exercise, some village youths mobilized and went to the plots of land in order to register their presence, “but what they got from Oduke youths, led by a man, simply identified as Adimkpaya, was deadly.
One of the rival villages (Umuezefadia) youths, led by one Chiadu Onyemem, the only son of his father, who allegedly mobilized war against Oduke was gruesomely murdered and buried in an unknown camp in the village, while his funeral was celebrated in absential by his relatives in Umuezefadia, his actual village.
The medical reports, signed by the Nigeria Police Medical Doctor, an Assistant Superintendent of Police, Dr. Ogwu Robinson, dated September 19, 2012, corroborated The Eagle Online findings.
According to a source: “The youths from Oduke have become so strong, connected and influential, such that they see themselves as untouchable based on the way and manner the series of petitions written against them to the State Police Command have met brick wall.”
The source linked one of such petitions to one Barrister K. O. Ajayi, dated September 17, 2012, copied to the Assistant Inspector General of Police, Zone 5, Benin City, Edo State.
While the people of Oduke village who were against the Supreme Court Judgment have threatened fire and brimstone over any trespasser, the people of Umuezeafadia who were favoured by the court judgement, met and concluded that on Supreme Court Judgment they stand.
Still unperturbed by the Supreme Court judgment, floodgates of petitions against the breach of peace in Umuezeafadia and blatant disregard of court order, said to have been reported by Police Doctor, ASP Ogwu Robinson, and Dr. U.C. Afuba, the youths of Oduke are bent in trespassing the controversial plots of land.
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