Just In: Eha-Amufu youths protest Edeoga’s seizure of their community lands
There was an overwhelming moment of tension in Eha-Amufu, Isi-Uzo Local Government Area of Enugu State today as youths stormed villages and market squares protesting the unlawful seizure of their community lands by the dismissed Enugu Labour Party guber candidate, Chief Chijioke Edeoga.
The information as gathered by Trend Africa correspondent, Ifeyinwa Onugwu has it that the youths numbering in hundreds after a general meeting held today, January 3rd, decided to embark on street protests as a way of sending a strong warning to the embattled guber candidate to desist from interfering with anything concerning their lands at Agu-Amede, Abor and Ape-Mgbuji.
The youths who were led by the leader of the Eha-Amufu Volunteer Youths Movement, Comrade Pascal Omeh popularly known as (Papilo) were seen with placards and green leaves demonstrating and chanting ‘Enough is enough, leave our ancestral lands for us.’
Addressing our correspondent in an interview, Comrade Pascal reiterated the ills that have bedeviled the people of Isi-Uzo and Eha-Amufu precisely since Chijioke’s days as a political office holder. He poured out his anger mostly on how the illusion-ridden guber candidate had on numerous cases seized the lands belonging to the indigents, widows and orphans in the community.
He cited specifically a parcel of land he fraudulently took away from the village people of Ape with the promise that the government had promised to build a giant rice mill for them on it, only for them to see Edeoga six years after, erecting a large poultry farm on the land.
The youth leaders equally lamented that all efforts made to follow this through the law enforcement agencies and institutions had yielded no positive result, as they always ended up according him the respect of being a powerful stakeholder of the community.
“What our people are suffering in the hands of egocentric politicians like Edeoga is too heavy and sad to narrate. You can’t separate Edeoga and lands; all that gives him fulfillment is to covet people’s properties. Mrs. Achuba Agnes whose husband left a cashew plantation was maltreated terribly by Edeoga who claimed that the plantation was never owned by Agnes’ husband, but his grandfather.
Currently, he is facing a lawsuit from the people of Ihanyi community over the same land, Orokoro village also instituted a court case against him over their land that he took from them. Does it mean that one man who happens to have some political power should be left to steal all the community lands? Enough is enough. The next time we see Edeoga on any of those lands, we will be forced to take the law into our own hands”, Pascal thundered.
Recall that Trend Africa had in October reported a land case between Chijioke Edeoga and elders of Mgbuji community.
