Emeka
Ibemere
The tension in
Ogwashi-Uku, Idemili Local Government Area, of Delta State, created by the
observation of Inne festival seems to have relaxed with the
observation of the festival concluded on Monday 14 October, 2013, at the palace
of Agidiehe quarters.
Before now, the festival generated a lot of
bad blood over the actual date of this year’s festival. About five people were
allegedly killed in crises over the Obiship in Ogwashi-Uku kingdom between the
families Obi Felix Ogochukwuka 11 of Deiyi royal family of Agidiehe quarters
and Umu obi Obahai royal family.
Despite the Appeal Court ruling in Benin City on the legal tussle over
the Obiship of Ogwashi Uku kingdom headquarters of Aniocha, South Local
Government Area of Delta State, peace eluded the community.
The court had declared the Umu obi Obahai royal family as the only family
qualified to produce obi of Ogwashi Uku. The court ruling said Professor
Chukwuka Okonjo is the authentic Obi of Ogwashi Uku after the High Court in
Delta State removed from the throne, Obi Felix Ogochukwuka 11 of Deiyi royal
family in 2007.
The judgement didn’t go down well with the people of Ogwashi-Uku even
though the case was said to be resting with Supreme Court.
However, this year’s festival of the famous Inne festival attracted
altercation between both families and some kingmakers in the community of who
and when should the Inne festival be celebrated.
The tension attracted the deployment of Nigerian Army, mobile policemen
and other security agencies in the area following the Inne festival which was
held on October Monday 14.
The soldiers were allegedly drafted to the community apparently to
prevent Deiyi royal family of Agidiahe, who are claiming the heir apparent to
the Obiship from celebrating the Inne.
Ogwashi-Uku people said they don’t want a ruler who doesn’t know their
customs and tradition to be their monarch and refused Professor Chukwuka
Okonjo, the father of the coordinating Minister for Finance and Economic
Planning, Ngozi Okonjo Iweala from Umu obi Obahai royal family, from observing
the new yam festival.
The Agidiahe quarters who spoke
through their leader, HH Nwajei Chuks Nwajei, Agumba and Akaji obi of
Ogwashi-Uku on weekend told Daily Newswatch that Ogwashi-Uku people celebrated
the new yam festival on Monday in disregard to the order of the sectional Obi
represented by Professor Chukwuka Okonjo. According to him, the success of the
new yam festival was a victory to self imposition.
“I really want to appreciate the Press,
especially your medium for your support in this matter. Because if not for the
Press, we wouldn’t have known what Ogwashi-uku would have turned into. And I
also wish to appreciate the commissioner of police of Delta State Police Command
for his deed and especially, the Ogwashi –Uku DPO, Mr. Galadinma who
professionally did his work perfectly”, he stated. “But without the media I
wouldn’t have known what could have happened”.
Nwajei said the Inne
festival was successful because he was able to obtain court injunction
restraining Chief Okonjo from stopping the Inne festival. “What happened was
that being a law abiding citizen, and knowing the kind of person he is, I tried
to obtain an injunction from the court restraining him from violating my
fundamental human rights to perform my Inne festival. I gave three injunctions;
another injunction was that he arrogated himself the Alpha and Omega and that
he wanted to recruit all the vigilantes in Ogwashi-Uku,” continuing he explained
that it was the masses of Ogwashi-Uku who despite all the humiliations and
injustice stood behind him during that day of festival.
“The Inne festival was success to the extent
that the police did their work very well. The press did their work and because
of the press, the police was able to conform to their duties. On that very
first day, we prepared and on the day, it was normal because the royal family
performed their own”, he explained. “It was a normal day but on my own day,
which was the second day, the kingmakers’ day, the police provided me with
adequate security. As I left Agidiehe, going to the palace, Okonjo mobilized
the Nigerian armed forces with his thugs and at a place known as isihe-ekpo,
there was a pool of water and I insisted that I was going to cross the river
through the pool of water but my people said no and refused”.
Nwajei further explained that he never knew that
Okonjo and one of his Chiefs one Lawrence obi and some of his men with soldiers
laid ambush for him and his people. “Then immediately my procession commenced, I
have to pass them knowing that he had instructed the army to shoot me but for
the courageous Nigerian police, led by Galadinma, who provided three vehicles
with his men, they had face- off with the Nigerian army”.
According to him, “I was shot at three times
and the Nigerian police had to cork their own gun, and asked the army that it
was not their right to abort a peaceful procession of a traditional festival.
It was a frontal war. The Nigerian police had to whisk me away to the palace.
Then Okonjo himself, and his so-called chiefs and the Nigerian army personnel
threatened to come to meet me in the palace”. Nwajei also stated that there was
instruction that he should be killed but that when the soldiers who followed
the Okonjo got to the roundabout, that the Nigerian police told them that there
was an instruction that they should not cross the roundabout in order not to
breach the security of the palace.
“From 3.30Am, Nigerian army led by Okonjo
with one Captain laid siege at the roundabout. The army on one side, the
Nigerian police on the other side. Then when all these things were happening,
the Ogwashi-Uku people were at a standstill”, he claimed. “First, when three
shots were fired at me, my mother was so scared that they have killed his son
and when rumours started making rounds that I have been shot and killed”.
“We were in a palace when calls were coming
from all over Nigeria and abroad that I have been killed. When the calls were
too much I gave my phones to my Personal Assistant, to be answering them. When
we finished the ceremony, around 6.30, they were still there waiting for me
thinking that I wasn’t going to come back in a procession but the custom of the
tradition says that when you go through the left; you are going to come back
through the right and if you go through the right; you are going to come
through the left. They knew that I was going to pass through the roundabout,
then when this thing happens initially, people were scared but when they knew i
was in the palace, they knew that the procession of my Inne has started”.
It was gathered that Ogwashi-Uku people
trooped out en-mass to join the procession. As soon as the procession comes to
an end, Nwajei was persuaded to go home in his car to avoid another altercation
but he refused to heed the pleas of the royal father, whom he claimed was the
authentic traditional ruler of Ogwashi-Uku.
“When we finished the ceremony, the royal
house was asking me to enter the car without the procession back to my ogwa
Agidiehe and I refused because what I needed was for Okonjo to show his
strengths. My wife and everybody were begging me to enter the car but I refused
on the grounds that I cannot violate the tradition because that was what the
tradition requires”, he explained.
“When I moved, I was surprised that the whole
of Ogwashi-Uku followed me in their thousands with their den guns, cutlasses,
stones and woods. Men, women and children, both the old and the young, they
followed me in the procession and we got there only to noticed that the army
had blocked the road with their vehicles and were armed with their guns. They
ordered my people to go back and I ran to the front and as God would have it, I
never knew that from the other end, Ogwashi-Uku people had started marching
from the left and right of the roundabout and there, Okonjo was there in his
jeep with all his chiefs but when they saw the crowed of people coming to that
place, the soldiers were so terrified”.
Nwajei explained that he was told that before
then, that Okonjo daughter had been calling the father to leave the scene of
the festival.
“We were using okada people to transmit from
the palace down to everybody. The son was calling the father to leave the scene
that he had been embarrassed for a very long time. So when I passed them, it
was a victory for Ogwashi-Uku kingdom. When got to the place where the soldiers
were, we started dancing and one of our sources who was with them told us that
when we were passing he was asleep in his car. And that one of the soldiers
asked him was this not the Agumba, we were waiting that is passing”, he stated.
“His private aide told him that Agumba has
insulted them. I didn’t insult Okonjo. The first time the purported obi would
laid ambush for five hours to stop me from performing my traditional rites
until the masses of Ogwashi-Uku numbering over 15,000, rose in unison to lead
me to my house; it has never happened in Ogwashi-Uku. He has made me so popular
that people are coming all over the country to see this Agumba”.
Nwajei stated that he would continue to
appreciate the good role played by the Nigerian police adding that he wouldn’t
have known what would have been the outcome of that festival if not for the
police.
“We
wouldn’t have known what Ogwashi-Uku could have become today”. He said.
“So after my Inne festival, every quarter
celebrated their Inne peacefully because the next day he went to Ogwashi-Uku,
he was humiliated and ashamed. We showed him that he wasn’t in charge. If an
obi should be celebrating his Inne with army and police, it shows that he
wasn’t a leader. I’m only a kingmaker and if should take Ogwashi-Uku to a
storm; where the youths, the elder, the cripple and everybody followed me back
to my place from the palace, it showed that they love justice. They were ready
to die for me, to die for their tradition”.
“It signifies that Okonjo is not our Obi and
he is not in-charge. He has been told this by the success of this festival in
an unmistakable term that he is not our leader, because before mine own Inne,
all the chiefs were afraid. He persuaded them with rice, money, letters, and
emissaries that they should not celebrate their Inne but they did.
What
happened was that after my own, they celebrated their own the next day because
they saw the crowed that followed me to the palace and back to my quarters and
they now know that the army was not going to follow him and the army never
followed him to Ogwashi Uku the next day. So, all the chiefs performed their
Inne. I wish to tell the Ogwashi-Uku people mostly those sitting on the fence
that this war wasn’t going to be fought by Agumba alone. This war is a common
war. Now we are smiling after the Inne festival. I thanked Okonjo herself for
making effort by asking her father to let go of Agumba; for asking her father
to leave the scene, leadership is trust. I don’t give people rice and money but
they know that am fighting their fight. They know that Ogwashi-Uku belongs to
them.
Nwajei
said he is using this medium to call the attention of the security agents in
the country over the high level of kidnapping in Ogwashi-Uku. He urged the
government to investigate kidnapping saga in his community.
“So
when people like us who are on the ground talk, we know where the problem in Ogwashi-Uku
is from. Recently a woman was kidnapped and killed after collecting ransom,
everything points to the evil going on in Ogwashi Uku because some people are
illegally occupying a throne that was not their own. For a man who wants to
appoint the entire vigilante in Ogwashi-uku, we fell that it was too abnormal
because in Lagos here, Oba of Lagos cannot appoint vigilante for the whole of Lagos
state. The law said that every quarter knows the genuine people in each quarter
and that they should appoint vigilante for themselves”, he stated. “What he
wanted to do was to appoint these people as surrogate to be perpetuating crimes
in Ogwashi-uku kingdom. I personally led to the abrogation of the last
vigilante and the stealing in Ogwashi-uku abated since then. They latter wanted
to constitute their own men who would be his vanguard to perpetuate illegality,
and then I took him to court”.
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