BY JIMITOTA ONOYUME, PORT HARCOURT

Prominent indigenes of Okpara community in Rivers State are saddened over what they described as a most disturbing development in their community.

According to one of them, Dr Peter Clever Obakponovwe, they are angry that their ancestral land was gradually being reduced to a graveyard. Dr Obakponovwe made the observation during a recent  meeting of the community at its ancestral home, Okpara inland.

Dr Obakponovwe apparently is not the first to have spoken out against the ugly trend in several communities that make up Okpara, a situation that is not peculiar to the area.

The grouse of residents of the communities is that most of their prominent sons and daughters prefer to build choice houses in the United States of America, Lagos, Abuja and other choice cities in the world, but fail to do same in their ancestral home where there is nothing to show that such big names are from there other than their family names.

Akpodiete, who spoke to Vanguard Metro, VM, in Okpara inland, said he was surprised when he saw the sky scraper the elder brother built in Lagos when he visited him. “He lived in the house with his nuclear family. It is  not that it is  a commercial property,” he noted.

He said he had to persistently asked his brother to come and develop a structure in the village at least, a place he could pass the night anytime he was home for family gatherings.

According to Akpodiete, it took him about five years of persuasion before the brother finally yielded and came home to acquire a two hundred by two hundred plot but did not develop it.

As he spoke, his voice suddenly dropped and tears started rolling down his cheeks. Looking this reporter straight in the eyes, he asked: “Do you know that my brother died 20 years after he acquired the plot. He did not develop it?”

Cassava farm

Pointing at a tomb on the vast land that had become a cassava farm, Akpodiete said that was all the family was able to put on the structure when he died. “You can imagine the shame we suffered when his friends came for his funeral. Most of them could not believe that he had no house in the village,” he said.

He said one of the late brother’s  friends who could not keep his thought to himself walked up to him  to ask if truly his elder brother had no house in the village. “ So you mean our friend who had buildings overseas and lived all his life in Lagos forgot that he had an ancestral home?” the fellow had asked him.

Chief Onos, a community leader said as a family they had not recovered from the shame they suffered when a former top government functionary from the family was buried. According to him, several siren-blaring vehicles drove into the town that day for the funeral which was slated at a vast land the cousin acquired in the ’70s and left undeveloped.

He said the children of the deceased who were in the United States came and erected a magnificent mausoleum on their father’s land. The place was agog for the funeral.

Individuals of varying races, including Whites, were in the town for the funeral. He said the children came with what looked like foreign canopies which they erected all over the place. Sadly as the funeral was going on it suddenly started raining. Heavy wind blew most of the canopies off the ground.

There was no house to run into so most of the guests had to rush for shelter into their vehicles.

He said some youths had to be quickly mobilised to hold the pillars of a canopy that was spread above the casket firmly on the ground while the rain lasted. He said the incident served as a lesson to many big men who were in the funeral.

Not too long after the incident, according to him,  most big men came home to develop the plots they had acquired years ago. Dr Obakponovwe , a former  President General of the community told VM that he could not fathom why some big men had refused to come home to develop the community.

He said one of the first things he did in his early years when he came back from overseas was to build a house in his village, believing that it would attract many others to come home and do same.

Pointing at his magnificent building fitted with modern comfort he said he erected the structure several years ago, adding that nothing ominous had happened to him after he undertook the project.

“This is where I hold ceremonies in the village. When top government officials want to see me, most times I slate the meetings in this my house,” he said. He was also a former Deputy President General, Urhobo Progress Union, the umbrella body of all Urhobo sons and daughters.

Okpara community generally is seen  as the torch light of Urhobo civilisation. Natives of the area don’t hesitate to tell you that the area produced what they dubbed the early colonial doctors in Urhobo nation and by extension the old Bendel State.

“This community boast of what we call colonial doctors in the old Bendel State. Our sons were trained by Europeans as doctors, they trained directly under the White man. We are among the few communities in the country to boast of about 30 doctors between the late ’60s and early ’70s,” Chief Ighoriokwunu told VM.

Another community leader, Mr Silas Akpevwe, said things are improving now as people are coming home to develop properties. But he said they want to see more buildings  in the area

Dr Obakponovwe  during his reign as President General, Okpara Patriotic Union, the apex social cultural body for people of the area, said the community would no longer allow burials in plots with only tombs.

According to him: “ Okpara is not a graveyard. We will no longer allow burials in undeveloped plots. People should not just come from wherever to build tombs in their lands as the only structures in the place”.

Family ancestry

While he advised those yet to develop their plots to do so, he said families wanting to bury on undeveloped plots should try to erect foundation on them before the burial and not just build only tombs. VM gathered that it is often not easy to sell off plots with tombs in the area because it is like buying a family ancestry.

Fredy Oghenero said the story about the rich building only in big cities forgetting their village was not peculiar to Okpara communities. According to him, it is a challenge most communities were facing in the state.

He said most rich men prefer to build in Warri, Sapele, Asaba and other urban  areas, leaving their villages out of their plans. “Painfully they state in their wills that they should be buried in their village; what an irony, “ he said.

He pleaded with the rich to know that they should also be part of effort to giving their villages a face lift, transforming  them into cities.