By Emmanuel Unah

CALABAR— SEVERAL families have been torn apart at Calabar, capital of Cross-River State following the  fight for assets left behind by deceased parents and family members by their children and relations, who use machete, dreaded juju and other  fetish preparations to outdo themselves, investigation by NDV has revealed.

It was gathered that some members of the affected families have not on speaking terms for years, while the property, which they are fighting for, especially money-spinning edifices, waste away with cases pending in court for determination.

NDV was confronted in a few minutes saunter on the streets of Calabar with the several abandoned sprawling estates, frequently traceable to wrangling among brothers over who gets what share of the assets

The struggle is sometimes so fierce that that machetes and the dreaded juju, Ekpeitiaba, which kills within five days are employed by some desperate family members to eliminate or subdue others in order to assume complete ownership or at least take the lion share.

Sources said the resort to backbiting was because of the fact that Efik nationality gives every member of the deceased family the rights to share in the property of  a departed father or mother, including the female members of the family, unlike in other traditions  where women do not have any claim.

Ignoring the dead

Our findings showed that the story about the estate in some cases, overshadows burial arrangement for the deceased.

There was a case of an aide to the former governor of the state, who died in a car crash; the family members and his wife were embroiled in a struggle over his assets, while he was left in a coffin outside for days.

‘Why my uncle and I are at war’

It was the same story with the family of a journalist. Edem, who laid claim to one of the houses of a woman he called “aunty.”

Her burial was so shabbily conducted that the deceased was conveyed in a rickety 404 pick-up van provided by the church to the cemetery, but the family members were busy in a fight over her expansive estate.

Edem, who works with a national daily, said he had been engaged in a legal tussle over a two- storey edifice in the estate with a popular politician, Bassey, now late.

He told NDV that litigation over estates left behind by dead relatives sometimes prolong for decades and a lot of money wasted in the process  by those  contending  for the estates.

Narrating what led to the protracted tussle between him and his late uncle, Bassey, Edem said the woman was very rich and died without her own children so she willed her estates to her brothers, sisters and their children.

“But in my own case, the woman wrote: ‘The house I live should go to my brother, Edem,’ and my uncle claims that the property was willed to my father and not me since the woman wrote ‘my brother’ and I am not her brother. So the property should become his own since my father was dead,” Edem asserted.

He added that his uncle failed to take cognizance of the fact that he bears “Edem” like his father and that the woman had always referred to him as “brother” since the demise of his father.

“My father died many years ago when my aunty was still strong, so if she wanted to will the house to my father, she would have changed it before she died since my father had passed on many years before her,” he stated.

Brothers brawl over hotel

There is also a celebrated instance of the tussle between two brothers, James and John, an elder and younger brother, which raged for many years over the ownership of a hotel left behind by their father.

The hotel which is spacious and located close to a strategic roundabout, near the University of Calabar, was a source of constant physical combat between the two brothers until the Ministry of Justice, Calabar, intervened.

“The ministry gave the bigger portion to the elder and the other to the younger one, and erected a high wall across the two segments.

“Even with the sharing, the relationship between the two is so fractious such that a spoon from one section of the hotel does not cross to the other,  and no one, not even the customers are allowed to take drinks or food from one section to the other,”  our source informed.

Over 400 cases in Ministry of Justice

NDV learned that at the Ministry of Justice alone, the estates administered for families are overflowing with files, as there are over 400 such cases currently being handled by the Administrator General of the state.

The Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Mr Joe Abang, said he was not relenting on his efforts at ensuring that every member of the family was fairly treated.

“Recently, I had a two- hour meeting with the director in- charge of the administration of estates; it is in that unit that there was a complaint that the ICPC had to come here, I have told the head of department there that for every estate that he handles, I should be informed no matter the circumstances,” he said.