LAND GRABBERS IN AND AROUND NEKEDE , ONCE AGAIN, WARNED BY GOV HOPE UZODINMA; NO EZE HAS ANY AUTHORITY TO DONATE PEOPLE’S LAND

LAND IN AND AROUND NEKEDE OFF LIMITS TO LAND GRABBERS AS GOV UZODINMA WARNS VIOLATORS

NO TRADITIONAL RULER HAS ANY RIGHT TO SIGN ANY MOU ON BEHALF OF COMMUNITY LAND OWNERS.

ALL NEGOTIATIONS MUST FOLLOW DUE PROCESS AND HANDLED DIRECTLY WITH THE LAND OWNERS

 

 

Land Grabbers in Imo State Beware! People masquerading as government agents and falsely claiming to have governmental powers via the “Eminent domain clause” while stealing land from indigenous land owners must be stopped. Selfish traditional rulers and greedy community leaders who devise to steal land from unsuspecting and gullible land owners must be stopped.

In the recent past, several land thieves attempted to grab our ancestral land but with collective community efforts of “a few good men”, we have been successful at pushing them off. Their modus operandi is quite simple; reach out to some greedy and ego bloated yet unpopular community leaders and offer them free allocation of lands that they never had ownership of and ask them to help propagate in the community the lies that the government via eminent domain powers had acquired their lands and they would be compensated with peanuts. They would now go to the government and claim they have gotten an understanding (MOU) with the community and trick the government to sign off on the project. At the end, the real land owners are shortchanged and the thieves would come off with more allocated lands than the original owners. We know them well.

One very strong voice against the said land grabbers each time they had illegally attempted to steal lands from Umuezereokam Community is 83 year old Nze U.K Amadi. He is the oldest man in Umuezereokam Nekede and the Chairman of Umuoma Nekede Joint Council Of Elders. Many people believe that Nze U.K Amadi was recently unfairly singled out, disrespected and humiliated by the Royal Cabinet of the Eze of Umuoma Nekede Autonomous community for his strong role in the past at repelling the land grabbers who felt they had better rapport with the palace. It could be recalled that Nze U.K Amadi was dragged to the police and eventually sued to court for using the title of “Nze”.

Many believe that humiliating him and attempting to strip the Nze title off him would tame and emasculate him so he won’t fight the same causes with the same level of energy as he had always done. Nze U K Amadi, a solid and very much loved community leader is believed to still maintain his integrity and not give in to the mischief as this current land grabbing attempts are once again, at hand.

No Traditional ruler has the right to donate any land to anyone in Imo State.

Our land in Nekede, Owerri West L.G.A of Imo State and many other communities in Imo State are family-owned, and the families must be approached and negotiations done directly with them, if the government needs any land for a ‘Conmon Good’ purpose.

“Only the governor can allocate land. Not even community heads, including traditional rulers. So, if you go to any community in the name of Imo Housing Authority or private developer, you are going there as a thief and when you’re caught, you would face criminal prosecution. Let no company or individual under any name or guise go to any community to sign any MOUs to acquire land”-said the Governor of Imo State, Gov. Hope Uzodinma on Sunday, April 3rd 2022 during a church service at the government house chapel.

With the statement from the governor himself, one begins to seriously question the wisdom and real intent behind the recent (04/01/22 – April 1st 2022) widely circulated reports of visits by the Eze of Umuoma Nekede Autonomous Community and Umuguma Autonomous community, both in Owerri West L G.A where they claimed to have signed MOUs with Imo State Housing Corporation to ‘donate’ land to Imo State Housing Corporation for the building of residential estates. No Eze has the right and authority to “donate” lands that belong to other individuals and families. OUR LANDS ARE NOT OWNED BY THE EZES BUT BY THE PEOPLE.

Again, Umuezereokam, Nekede has no community lands as all landed properties are family and individual-owned and any dealings on the lands must be negotiated directly with the concerned individuals and families and not the traditional rulers and community leaders.

We need industries in the area and not thieves coming to grab lands in the name of building housing estates. No one is actually against the government coming into our communities to use our land for “common good” purposes but such must be done with the consent of and in direct negotiations with the families and individual land owners, not selfish community leaders trying to enrich themselves off of lands that do not belong to them.