The people of Ezza-Effium in Ohaukwu local government area of Ebonyi State have rejected the peace pact brokered by the peace committee set up by Governor Francis Nwifuru and headed by Bishop Emeritus of the Catholic Diocese of Abakaliki, Bishop Michael Okoro (rtd).
Governor Nwifuru set up the committee to end the three-year-old war in Effium community which has claimed hundreds of lives and property worth millions of naira destroyed.
The people of Effium and Ezza-Effium in the local government have been at war since January 21, 2021 with indigenes, non-indigenes and security operatives brutally murdered by warlords of both communities.
Ezza Effium rejected the white paper submitted by the Bishop Emeritus and maintained that sections of the peace pact infringed on their fundamental human rights.
The people under the umbrella of Ezza-Effuim Consultative Assembly in a statement signed by the chairman, Chief Aligwe Chukwuma and secretary, Dr Bernard Orichi, alleged that some of their stakeholders were compelled by the state government to sign the agreement.
They described the peace pact as a recipe for another apartheid regime in the 21st century adding that the white paper was against the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria which gives every Nigerian right to live anywhere in the country.
They wondered why they were described by the white paper as tenants in Effium community. “The White paper is completely unacceptable to us, the aspect of the white paper that barred us from producing a traditional ruler of Effium community when we have been doing that for long is unacceptable.
“The recommendations of Bishop Okoro’s Peace Panel and its implementation could better be described as apartheid. The report which erroneously posited Ezza-Effium people, who have lived in their God given community since time immemorial, as tenants, is a malicious and misleading report orchestrated by supposed Men of God.
“What an unprofessional and disreputable contradiction. It is rather ridiculous that we are now regarded as tenants by the purported Peace Pact document, whereas the Uffioms, who are non-Igbo speaking, let alone of Ebonyi State origin, are now described as ‘landlord’ by the same Peace Pact document.
“This is wrong, in fact and law, and a calculated, organized decimation and diminution of Ezza-Effium personality in particular, and Ezza people in general.
“We are simply accommodative and in keeping with the provisions of 1999 Constitution of Nigeria (as amended) which gave all of us equal rights to citizenship.
“We Ezza-Effium people, therefore, reject, in its totality, any Peace Pact or White Paper that tends to deprive us of any of our constitutional rights and privileges in Effium community, inclusive of the rights over our entitlements, freedoms, life and property,” the group said.
