The people of Mbodo Community in Aluu Clan of Ikwerre Local Government area, Rivers State, have called on Governor Siminalayi Fubara to caution two of his appointees for allegedly threatening the age-long peace in the community through their actions.
The community named the appointees as the Commissioner for Youth Development, Dr. Chisom Gbali and the Special Adviser on Political Affairs and Strategies, Dr. Darlington Orji.
The people, in a Save-Our-Soul (SOS) to Fubara accused both Gbali and Orji of threatening the age-long peace in the community through their actions.
The SOS was signed by the paramount ruler of the community, Eze Meshack Owhonda and chairman of the Community Development Committee, Mr. Nelson Wali, as well as the heads of the seven families that make up Mbodo community.
The Community accused Dr. Gbali of interference in its age-long governance system without consulting the paramount ruler thereby threatening the peace and decades of harmonious co-existence among the people.
It reads in part: “Your Excellency, Sir, We herein, the Paramount Ruler, and Head of Omuemeninye Family, Eze Meshack Owhonda, his Chiefs In-Council, Elders,Youths and Women of Mbodo Community, Aluu Clan of Ikwerre LGA with heart of pain and undue intimidation write to bring Your Excellency’s attention to the unmerited humiliation and denigration of age-long tradition of sustainable peace and co-existence by the Hon. Commissioner for Youth Affairs, engineered by Mr. Darlington Oji, Your Excellency’s Special Adviser, Political Affairs and Strategies.
“Mbodo Community as one of the outstanding communities playing host to the nation’s oil and gas activities is noted to be the most peaceful over the decades and has centuries-long internal mechanism to settle our rifts wherever it arises, if any.
“References are there to refer; Mbodo community has never been involved in whatever crises in Rivers State or in Ikwerre LGA where we belong.
“We have records of disciplined young men deeply involved in the management of the affairs of the community in line with the community’s norms and rule of leadership succession without rancorous issues that had ever warranted the community to report to whatever institution of the government at whatever level for intervention.
“We have lived peacefully together as a family and varied age grading carrying out their respective traditional assignments over the years.
“And for the Hon. Commissioner for Youths Development and connivance with Mr. Darlington Oji to begin to interfere into Mbodo Community’s endogenous ways of governance that has engendered peace and harmonious co-existence decades for whatever reasons without recourse to the Paramount Ruler of the community and his Chiefs In-Council is grossly unfortunate and a deliberate invitation to create anarchy in the Mbodo Community which we would not let it be.”
