By Emma Amaize,

THERE is  palpable apprehension at Obi-Anyima community, Abavo clan in Ika South Local Government Area of Delta State since May 15 when a leader of the community, the Eleme,  Chief Amenaghawon Uti Chinyem, a father of seven children, was shot dead  while  returning home from a peace-meeting, convened by the Obi of Abavo kingdom.

The worry in the community is that the alleged killers and  financiers  are walking free  while the police are said to be  succumbing to pressure from  a former top government official to shield the suspects from prosecution, a charge  the Delta  police spokesman, Mr. Charles Muka, rebutted.

As at  last week, the spokesman of the community, Mr. Gilbert Omeleze, said the suspects  had regrouped in a neighbouring community, preparatory to eliminating  villagers, who they suspected  are the arrowheads of the  move  to arrest them for the killing. He blamed it all  on the police  who, he said,  are  slow  to act or might have been compromised because “one of them told me that we have not adequately mobilized them to arrest the criminals”.

Muka ruled out the issue of compromise on the part of the police, saying some suspects, including a chief, have  been charged to  court by the police over the murder. A police officer who spoke to Sunday Vanguard on  the condition of anonymity, however, said that some policemen were aiding the suspects to evade justice.

Wife of the deceased, Mrs. Chinyem, explained  that the Eleme title of Obi-Anyima was hereditary and her husband did not have any reason to relinquish it because some people were fighting him over it, adding, “He had no premonition of death, he was returning from a peace meeting when he was killed”.

Power tussle
It  was gathered that following a  leadership tussle in the community, principally between the deceased and one of his cousins,  the Obi  called a peace meeting, which  conferred  the leadership of the town on the Eleme  and asked the other faction to cooperate with him, while he should also extend a hand of fellowship to them.

Before then, the state government, in January 22, 2010, had  mediated  in the feud between the warring factions, which allegedly  extended to the sharing of  a  largesse from an oil company  operating in the area. Hon Sunny Ogwu, former senior special adviser on security matters to Governor Uduaghan,  in a  letter,  charged  Chinyem  to “carry everybody living at Obi-Anyima along”.

The government directed that all properties seized by the Eleme  be released immediately to the rightful owners, while all cases instituted by the deceased in relation to  the land of the community should be withdrawn within 14 days.

Solicitors to the family  of the slain chief, Jefferson Uwoghiren and Co, in a letter  to the Assistant Inspector General (AIG)  of Police, Zone 5 Headquarters, Benin City, Edo State, made allusion to those who murdered his client and reasons, saying  it was done “with the sole aim of dispossessing the Eleme of Obi-Anyima and the community of their due compensation by the oil company (Pan Ocean Oil Corporation Nigeria Limited, which is carrying out oil exploration  in the community)”.

He said it was the said challenge that resulted in several pending litigations in court and a failed assassination bid on the Eleme on May 14, a day before  he was finally killed. He said the slain chief sent  a distress call to the State Security Service, SSS, Agbor and the Delta commissioner of  police,  who drafted policemen to guard him that night, but the patrol were withdrawn in the morning of May 15, while he was murdered in the evening of that day.

Uworighen said the sponsors of the murder had boasted before the killing of  Chinyem  that they would eliminate him “to assume full and unfettered control of all oil revenue and compensation accruing from the continuing oil exploration activities of the said Pan Ocean Oil Corporation, Nigeria in the said community”.

Community sources said it was in fulfillment of this threat that cultists were hired to eliminated the Eleme because some persons were  not satisfied that the Obi of Abavo kingdom had revalidated  the leadership of the town by the slain chief.