By IKENNA EMEWU 

The land dispute between Edda and Amasiri in Ebonyi State has taken more than enough on society and the state than we know. Whatever creates a scar in the minds and memories of two neighbours and causes the cord of affinity to snap is a deep cut. That is what has happened between Edda and Amasiri. Whether that would heal is left to time to unravel.What made the problem linger this long is the tardiness of the past leadership. That is why I stand with Governor Ogbonna Nwifuru for taking more decisive steps than his predecessors in resolving this problem and laying the ghosts to rest. 

I applaud him for the panel of 19 members headed by Professor Paul Nwobashi he created on March 6 to demarcate the space and put a mark on where whose space stops between the two. It is sordid, shameful, and unthinkable that in today’s world we are still discussing killing people over land when the rest of the world has advanced to land space management, where people applying tech and modern skills would make more economic gains from half an acre than someone who has 200 acres without skills. This is a time in the history of man where skills, ingenuity and adaptive radiation speak the language of growth. 

While the entire Arab world has endless space of land, Israel, with a strip that is one millionth of such space rule the world. While Dubai in the desert is green, Lagos and Port Harcourt by the ocean are dry and garish. That is the difference between raw nature and the blend of nature and nurture. I welcome the team of 19 with a task so compelling that the members dare not fail or compromise. To the Nwaobashi Panel, I want to remind you that your task is not about Edda and Amasiri, not about Ebonyi State. It is about humanity. 

As a journalist, I reported reconciliation sittings that made far-reaching decisions. That was the Justice Chuwudifu Oputa Panel on Human Rights Violations. Even though the final report was frustrated by people who live by the sword, hundreds of reconciliations were achieved on the hearing floors. Many individuals forgave each other, embraced and unburdened their minds of the wrongs of the past. Many of us shed tears of joy watching those scenes live in Lagos, Enugu, Abuja. They were quite emotional. That was because the Panel stood on the truth and conscience. The ball is in the court of the Nwobashi Panel. Would you vindicate humanity? Would you assuage the pains and bandage the wounds? Would you leave Ebonyi better? Would Edda and Amasiri remember you as the arbiters of conscience, or as people who made scant value of this onerous task? 

Time, nature and history have collectively placed a burden and opportunity on your shoulders. It would be a burden when you fail. It would be an opportunity when otherwise. But most of all, think about how you want to be remembered after this assignment. 

All of you are members of the society who have one affiliation or the other in that state and in either Edda or Amasiri. I would task you to drop your baggage of biases and relationships. Those don’t bring justice; what brings justice is when we stick to facts and the truth. Ebonyi will never go to Jupiter and harvest spirits without relationships to resolve this issue. It must be human beings. That is why it is you, 19. 

Your task and mandate is to avenge those innocent souls wasted, those victims of circumstances, those caught in the crossfire of skirmishes. There are many of them – that breastfeeding mother and her suckling hacked dead in their home, that elderly woman of over 70 walking on a cane to support her ailing frame whose head was chopped off, those minding their business whose blood was spilt one way or the other, and even the people who boast of bloodshed and how they will do more. Would you want to be remembered for waging a just war of truth and conscience, or would you compromise? 

On January 27, 2002, bombs exploded in thousands at the military armoury in Ikeja, Lagos, and almost reduced Lagos to a heap of ruins. Some years later, Governor Babatunde Fashola came to the mass grave of the unclaimed corpses to host a memorial. He made a statement that touched spirits that he will leave a lasting memorial for the victims – that in the future, nobody will die the way they did. He built two bridges over the spot on the Oke Afa-Ajao Estate canal, the spot where the victims drowned in their effort to run across into safety. Those roads are in use to date. What Nwifuru is about doing is akin to that.

He wants the boundary demarcated so that more lives and property would not be wasted anymore. This intervention of his solves so many problems, such as the stoppage of wars, clashes, bloodshed and destruction. It also circumvents lengthy litigation that many times don’t resolve the issue. The byproduct would be the establishment of peace, the foundation on which growth and development stand. The Land Use Act 1978, now a part of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended) at Section 315 vests powers in the governor of a state to intervene in land disputes and allocations and resolve rancours, make decisions and grant statutory rights. The authority of the governor to manage lands includes the resolution of disputes arising from ownership. This is the fulcrum of him impaneling this body.

 Therefore, the team has all the grounding in law to do its work. 

Sound decisions on land ownership stand on some pedestals to be valid and conscientious, and it is on those pedestals I would plead with you to stand. They include: 

*Production of title documents

*Traditional evidence

*Acts of Ownership

*Long possession

These points of fact and law are well entrenched in the Supreme Court decision of 1976 in Idundun vs. Okumagba. Even in international jurisprudence, such as the Temple of Preah Vihear Case (Cambodia vs Thailand), 1962, reaffirmed in 2013, the rules apply. The decision was made relying on a map of 1903, and finally resolved in favour of Cambodia, and has become a locus classicus in international law. 

Historical facts were also relied on in the judgement of Libya vs Malta by the ICJ over the maritime boundary of the two, and finally in the Land Boundary Case between Cameroon and Nigeria over the Bakassi Peninsula. On this latest involving Nigeria, the ICJ relied on the Thomson-Marchand Declaration of 1929-1930 and the Hendersen-Fleuriau Exchange Notes, 1931, to determine rightful ownership. 

I, therefore, urge the Nwobashi Panel not to overlook such ancient documented evidences in the possession of the parties. In situations of doubt, refer to their sources to determine authenticity. Kindly take the approach of visiting the places in dispute, come back to your office and hold sittings, hearings and findings where the parties would be allowed to make presentations of the documents on which they lay their claims of ownership. Make wise and informed decisions, and to do that, don’t be in a hurry because a panel may ask the creating body for more time if its task requires that to arrive at the truth. 

In international border decisions, sometimes, an armistice zone is created between the space of the warring parties. I once visited the Kaesong Armistice Zone between South Korea and North Korea. You may adopt that, if you consider it trite to create an armistice zone of maybe 500 meters to the two sides of Edda and Amasiri from where the boundary is. The two sides make a space of one kilometre to be possessed by the government as a way of keeping the two sides away from each other at close range. 

In my considered opinion, let the Nwobshi Panel do all that is necessary, wise, just, equitable and right to make sure that after your work, it shall never be heard that Amasiri and Edda had skirmishes over land. God bless your effort. 

* Emewu, a journalist and Director of Research, Zhejiang Normal University, China, wrote from Edda