If investigations by www.calitown.com and information gotten from sources are anything to go by then Cross River State may be on the verge of playing host to another communal conflict, we can reveal.
This impending conflict may involve the Ekim and Enen villages of Ito South clan, Eburutu, and the other Ito villages, all in Odukpani LGA. At the centre of the disagreement is the fertile Odioho piece of land, believed to be relentlessly exploited by the other more than 40 villages to the detriment of Ekim and Enen.
While several attempts are thought to have been made by the Ekim and Enen villages to tow the path of peace, a few influential indigenes of Ito, resident in Calabar, seem hell-bent on drawing the impoverished communities into a conflict, one that will threaten long existing family ties. Specifically, one source informed that, “these our brothers in Calabar have consistently sponsored recalcitrant youths in the area to relentlessly enter the land in dispute and do as they like, while brandishing offensive weapons and daring anybody to stop them. See, this is a piece of land for which reason we are in court but people are not respecting the law, considering too that there is no way law enforcement can be carried out in our area; we don’t even have a police station there”.
A few arrests are said to have been made, with those arrested detained at the Zone 6 headquarters of the Nigeria Police, Calabar. Again, indigenes of the area are appealing that government wades into the matter to help avoid the unfortunate circumstances of a communal conflict, just like, “it will be important that those sons and daughters of ours, comfortably stoking the embers of this conflict from Calabar, are identified and conclusively dealt with by the law”, as a source in the area concluded.
