WARRI—Itsekiri Consolidated Movement, ICM, has berated the Seipakumor of Gbaramatu, Warri South-West Local Government Area, Delta State, Lt.-Col. Satchie Etoromi (rtd), over statements credited to him that Itsekiri’s claim of Ikpokpo community, Ugborodo, was due to alleged fraudulent court judgment.

ICM, an Itsekiri socio-cultural group, in its reaction, described Chief Etoromi’s outburst as a slap on the Nigerian judiciary.

It said: “If there is anything called fraudulently obtained judgment, Chief Etoromi is a major beneficiary, as majority of the contracts he has executed as community representative, particularly through his biological affinity with Itsekiri, are products of his alleged fraudulently obtained judgments.”

ICM, in a statement by its Chairman, Mr. Oritsegbegbemi Besidone, sought to know why Etoromi, who said that he is from Itsekiri, has “continually made himself a tool of ethnic disharmony by the Gbaramatu Ijaws.”

ICM said that Etoromi’s insinuation in reference to a purported letter written by the Itsekiri Leaders of Thought, dated December 29, 1984 to the effect that they (Itsekiri) allowed their land to be occupied by the Ijaw as a price the Itsekiri had to pay in the interest of peace and progress in the defunct Warri Division, was a clear indication of “a strategic script by Etoromi’s pay masters to forcefully take Itsekiri lands at the slightest opportunity in the name of peace in Warri.”