Early this morning, calitown.com sources revealed that after a night where youths and men in both Usumutong and Ediba kept vigil, protecting their respective communities against any form of attack as the communal clash between the communities take on days, most families have begun evacuating children and the elderly to surrounding communities. A source insisted that, “it is a better option for most of us than to leave our aged parents at home for anybody to come and kill them. If this happens, this clash will never end”. Schools in both communities have been on lock down and people can be seen in groups as our correspondent reports. It is a situation that is dire, calitown.com can say.
Meanwhile, competent sources in both communities apart from laying the blame for this unfortunate situation on the elites from Usumutong and Ediba, feel too that government has not handled the situation well. “The traditional rulers from Usumutong and Ediba were summoned to Calabar and they all assembled there, they were even at the CRS House of Assembly in droves and nobody had any fruitful discussion with them until they came back. Our son who is the State Security Adviser has not set foot here to see what he can do instead he is busy making announcements and convening meetings in Calabar when the problem is in his backyard. Will a meeting in Calabar, about 140 kilometres from Abi, yield a better outcome than the one we can hold in Itigidi, our headquarters?”, one source submitted.
“Government should please understand too that those our elitist sons and daughters must be discouraged from sending monies home and arming the local people here to kill each other while they all sit in Calabar and other places and tell Liyel Imoke, our son lies. The answer to this problem is simple, let us first extract a ceasefire, tie our traditional institutions to that ceasefire and begin to seriously address the issues that are behind this ugly situation. Sitting in air-conditioned offices in Calabar and making radio announcements will not solve this problem, only deliberate action will”, the source concluded.
Competent government sources maintain in a conversation with calitown.com that “this security challenge is presently being contained and a few pronouncements on government’s part will soon show that we are not taking this situation lightly”.
Both communities goofed; the ties b/w them is so much so that they shouldn’t carry arms against each other. I feel for the defenseless aged people of both communities. At a time they should be reaping from their long perseverance; after training the children, they are now being hacked to death by children from the opposite sides. It is unfortunate.