IKA WEEKLY NEWSPAPER CALLS ON OBOREVWORI TO SECURE IKA NATION, DELTANS
…Calls On State House of Assembly to Do the Needful
…Tells Ika Traditional Rulers To Close Rank And Save Ikaland
Ika Weekly Newspaper Editorial Board and Management is alarmed that after close to one year of unwarranted criminality, kidnapping, killing, raping of Ika young and old women and destruction of farm lands allegedly by Fulani herdsmen, pastoralists, nomadic or semi-nomadic whose primary occupation was raising livestock but presently busy committing heinous crimes in Ika land nothing has been done by the government.
More painful is the awareness that the Newspaper in an editorial comment on April 23, 2024, drew the attention of the state government to the ongoing massacre of peace-loving Ika people and passionately pleaded with the government to come to their urgent rescue before they are wiped out by these dangerous men.
The plea seems to have fallen on a deaf ear as the Government neither took a calculated step to arrest the situation nor visited Ika land for an on the spot assessment of the ongoing ‘genocide’ against Ika nation.
Like every Ika son and daughter, the newspaper is particularly pained that all the State Government could do on the matter is nothing but of excuses through his Executive Assistant on Communications and Head of the State Orientation Bureau, Dr. Latimore Oghenesivbe, an exercise that has produced monument of nothingness.
SEE ALSO:Â FARMER LAMENTS AS HERDSMEN DESTROY FARMLANDS
Compounding the State Government failure is the fact that late last year (2023), the Newspaper learnt that Hon. Festus Okoh, representing the good people of Ika South Local Government Area at the Delta State House of Assembly, raised a motion, drawing the attention of the House to the ongoing massive kidnapping in Ikaland.
Following which the House passed a resolution mandating the State Governor to immediately end the human carnage in Ika land. Like other efforts in the past, the State Governor neither acknowledged receipt of the resolution nor acted on the directive. This development and the state government style of leadership is in the Newspaper’s view is not only very disheartening but an aberration!
The pains arising from these killings are deepened by the fact that it is avoidable.
Without mincing words, the ongoing human carnage in Ika land is glaringly a failure of leadership. And of course, the blame goes to the Chief Security of the state with constitutional mandate of protecting lives and property while ensuring economic wellbeing of the people of the state.
Even at the risk of repetition, the Newspaper would like to ask why it is taking the government eternity to implement the Anti-Grazing law passed during the time of the present governor as Speaker of the Delta State House of Assembly and was subsequently signed into law by the former governor of the state, Senator (Dr.) Ifeanyi Okowa?
The Newspaper is therefore pleading with the state governor as the Chief Security Officer of the state and members of the State House of Assembly, as the representatives of the people, to be alive to their responsibilities.
On their part, the traditional rulers in Ikaland and well-meaning sons and daughters of Ika origin, should in the interim close rank and find home-grown security solutions to the nagging challenge since it is abundantly obvious that the state has presently not done anything to avoid it escalating beyond this for no one knows whose turn it will be if escalates beyond this.
A stitch in time, they say, saves nine