Ubahu community in Enugu decries alleged massive land grabbing, urges Enugu Govt intervention
The people of Ubahu Community in Nkanu East Local Government Area in Enugu State have decried alleged massive land grabbing on their ancestral land, appealing to Enugu State Government to intervene to forestall unrest.
The people, who said this during a peaceful demonstration with placards held in the community on Thursday, purported that their ancestral land had been taken over in various axis of the community by people with no identity.
The placards read: “We Have No Place to Farm; Due to Activities of Unknown Land Grabbers” and “Our Land Is Completely Taken Over By Alleged Different Government Officials Without Due Consultations”.
Others read: “Our Houses Are Mapped Out for Demolition, Farmlands Forcefully Taken and Plan to Chase US Out from Our Ancestral Land” and “We Have No Place To Farm and Hunger Is Taking Over Ubahu”.
Speaking, acting Youth Leader of the community, Mazi Chukwuebuka Nnaji, said that the entire community had been through into confusion due to massive land grabbing activities on the community’s ancestral land.
Nnaji noted that the massive land grabbing had been carried out by persons, whose “mission and identity are not clear.”
He noted that when a group, organisation and government wants to acquire land for developmental purpose, it is done in an organised, coordinated and people-informed manner, leaving no one in doubt of their intention.
“The present development, seeing several unknown people occupying several land portions in different locations of the community is unacceptable.
“We are worried as nobody or authority is talking to us or explaining issues to us. The entire land takeover, if geninue, it is not done in an organised, coordinated and people-informed manner.
“We know by the Constitution, all land belongs to the government; but before the government, there are people who owns the land by ancestral heritage that needed to be carried along.
“As a government, you cannot come to take a communal or ancestral land without formerly informing the traditional ruler, the President-General, prominent elders and other stakeholders of the community,” he said.
A women leader in the community, Ma Ugochi Uzoma, lamented that the pieces of land most household cultivate each year had been forcefully taken over, while most women, including widows, forced out of their farmlands.
Uzoma noted that recently some of their houses were marked for demolition by the alleged land grabbers so that they get an expanded and massive land portions.
“The people doing this only have the intention to kill us through hunger and sickness following it or we permanently relocate from our ancestral homes/land and they take over.
“We are pleading for help from everybody. Some people are planning to wipe us out from the face of the earth. Our ancestors will never allow them to succeed,” she said.
Ubahu community is an immediate neighbouring community to Owo community, which is the community that Gov. Peter Mbah of Enugu State hails from.