By UDO IBUOT

THE road to justice is always far from smooth. Its path is often winding, but as Plato explains in The Republic, justice breeds unanimity and friendship, whereas injustice breeds animosities and broils between men. Although justice may be difficult to define, a correct account can be given as restoring to the people what is their due, or what is just. 

For the distressed people of the Ikot Akpan Udo community in Ikot Abasi LGA of Akwa Ibom State, Tuesday, August 16, 2022, marked a watershed in their expectations of an end to injustice. This was 13 days short of the 14th anniversary of the August 28, 2008, massacre unleashed on the community by the Amazaba of Eastern Obolo LGA. They had suffered injustice from the hands of those who committed it with impunity. The supposition was not because the community had no power to retaliate or to commit injustice, but because they regarded the principle of justice with satisfaction, having practised it willingly.

The state’s White Paper Committee visited the community and held a meeting with the people. The committee, which comprised about six commissioners, two permanent secretaries and other top government officials, was led by the Commissioner for Health, Professor Augustine Umoh. The meeting was also attended by the chairman of the Ikot Abasi local government council, Elder Joshua Afia, and some of his officials. 

The committee members were obviously outnumbered by policemen and security details. Their mission, according to Prof. Umoh, was to identify infrastructure destroyed by the Amazaba during their attacks on the community. Though the team left Uyo, the state capital, with the farcical assumption that peace had been achieved between the Amazaba and Ikot Akpan Udo, following the brute force the government applied to its appointed chiefs in Ikot Abasi to endorse the Andoni-inspired memorandum of understanding, MoU; the committee members were welcomed to the community with placards that advertised a contrary situation. 

The team soon realised that while the citizens behaved in an orderly manner, they were vociferous and firm in declaring that they were not prepared to co-habit with the Amazaba aggressors. The government’s deodorised assumptions were described as peace of the graveyard, and a waste of time. 

The committee members were presented with two scenarios as fait accompli: The first was that if the white paper did not provide for a delineated boundary between Ikot Abasi and Eastern Obolo local government areas, it would be dead on arrival and thus not acceptable to the people.

This position flows from government officials’ minimal understanding of the topography of the territories in dispute. A clear example was the listing of the community’s farmlands and even those of surrounding villages like Ikot Ikwot and Ikot Okwo as Eastern Obolo local government territories. 

The community had vehemently advocated for the Akpan Udo River, which flows from Ikot Ekpang in Mkpatenin LGA to the Atlantic Ocean’s estuary, to be designated as the boundary between Ikot Abasi and Eastern Obolo LGAs. The implication of this delineation is that littoral villages such as Nda Uko and Ikot Akpan Udo, as well as the fishing settlements of Iso Otoyo and Isong Mfon, among others, on the right bank of the river would remain in Ikot Abasi LGA.

This recommendation was made long before the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly agreed to it, and it is based on altruistic knowledge with the potential to end all wars in this region. The state legislature, last year, passed a motion that ordered the government to compel the state’s surveyor-general to expand the delimitation of the boundaries beyond Ikot Abasi to include Mkpatenin, Onna, Esit Eket and Ibeno LGAs with Eastern Obolo LGA. 

The second fait accompli was that the Amazaba must be situated at a location that is not less than five miles away from Ikpaisong Ikot Akpan Udo. The intent of the premise was to provide a clear immunity from future Amazaba attacks, since it is obvious that the Amazaba desire for lebensraum (living space at the expense of other people’s land) was to annihilate this community and take over the land. 

The Amazaba had, on six different occasions after the 2008 mayhem, hired Ijaw militants to attack, kill, and destroy virtually every house in the community. These militants even shot the Divisional Police Officer for Ikot Abasi who came with his team in response to one of the attacks in 2016. There is nothing on the horizon that can prevent Amazaba from planning fresh attacks on the community, especially as the state government did nothing to protect our people throughout the periods of previous attacks. Violence and bloodletting are in the Amazaba DNA, and history has shown that they have no capacity to live in peace. Ikot Akpan Udo community is not opposed to the peace moves of government, but her input should be incorporated into such MoUs before implementation.    

Also noteworthy is the view that the plan to redevelop the destroyed infrastructure was taken by the white paper committee without input from the community stakeholders. Contemporary development communication literature is replete with accounts of failure or lack of sustainability of projects planned with top-down communication strategies.

It is our view that development projects should no longer be ‘deposited’ in communities without prior interactions with the local stakeholders in the form of decision-making input during their planning, execution, and sustainability. Such interactions, or bottom-up communication strategies, have the advantage of ensuring considerable empowerment and training of youths and stakeholders for the maintenance and sustainability of such projects after their commissioning by the authorities. 

*Dr.Ibuot, a journalist, wrote from Lagos