The returning residents of the troubled Okuama community in the Ughelli South Local Government Area of Delta State have expressed their preference to stay on their land, rather than relocate to the internally displaced persons camp established by the Delta State government.
A visit to the IDP camp located inside Ewu Grammar School, in Ewu-Uehobo kingdom, showed no existence of any resident, one week after it was opened.
It will be recalled that the Okuama community was devastated and levelled into ruins by the aggrieved military troops, in retaliation for the killing of officers and soldiers purportedly on a peace mission.
The men of the Nigerian Army were murdered by yet-to-be-identified gunmen, during their visit to settle the Okuoma and Okoloba communal feud.
To provide succour for the returnees, the Delta State Governor, Sheriff Oborevwori, set up an IDP camp to cater to their rehabilitation.
Against the provision, the residents waited for the military to pull out and had to contend with looters from the neighbouring Okoloba communities, who were reportedly scavenging the ruins of their various ancestral homes.
The residents consequently maintained their ground that they would rather settle on their ancestral land than in a camp set up for them by the government at Ewu-Urbobo, several miles from their homes.
“We are not going to Ewu to stay. Okuama is our ancestral land. If you want to build a camp for us, come to our ancestral land and build the camp. If the camp is built in Okuama, indigenes of Okuama will surely come to stay, but if the camp is outside Okuama, we the displaced people of Okuama are not going there,” some leaders of the returning Okuama indigenes stated.
Speaking with journalists on Tuesday, an Okuama indigene and retired civil servant who would not want his name in print, affirmed the resolve of the displaced indigenes to reject the option of IDP camp located at Ewu-Urbobo kingdom.
He said, “Someone is asking me to go and stay in an IDP camp built in Ewu after they have destroyed my house which I spent my sweat as a common civil servant for 37 years to build.”
Another Okuama indigene, a farmer, expressed the fear that if they acceded to the Ewu-Urbobo IDP camp option, they would lose their farm holdings in Okuama to looters from the neighbouring communities.
“Here in the Okuama community, we the returnees have some cassava in the farm and the forest waiting for harvesting. But if we are taken to an IDP camp in Ewu and stay there, we cannot harvest those crops, and ultimately, we will lose those crops to looters, just as we have lost our houses and property to the military.
“What we have here in Okuama community, from what the looters from our neighbouring communities and the military left behind, we can still get a good harvest if we stay in Okuama. But if we go to the IDP camp in Ewu, we will not be able to harvest our crops,” he said.
The farmer appealed to the state government to build the IDP camp for the people on their ancestral land, so they could survive.
“Even though we know that the government will cater for us there, we the Okuama people know better that we cannot survive there in Ewu. Staying in our ancestral land is preferable to us as we can survive here in Okuama than going to Ewu,” he said.
Efforts to obtain from the IDP camp officials the number of Okuama people so far profiled for admission into the rehabilitation camp were futile, as nobody was ready to avail newsmen of such record, as of the time of filing this report.
Only last week Wednesday, the head of the IDP camp management committee, Mr Abraham Ogbodo, had announced that the IDP camp located inside Ewu Grammar School, set up by the Delta State government to rehabilitate displaced indigenes of the troubled Okuama community, was ready for occupation.
He called on the Okuama displaced indigenous farmers to start moving in while assuring them of security and comfort.
