It was yesterday that I went to my village to see my elderly mother. On getting to the village, I only met a completely deserted community in the place I call my home and my cradle. I brought out my phone to call my brothers to enquire about their whereabouts. I called my first brother and enquired of his whereabout; and he told me that he was in the thick forest of Abama community, Obot Akara LGA, Akwa Ibom state. Abama is a neighboring village to the people of Ariam, in Ikwanu LGA of Abia State. Abama has existed and formed part of Akwa Ibom State’s map for over three hundred years. And for the over three hundred years that we have existed, we have lived with the communal war with our Ariam neighbors and brothers from Ikwanu LGA, Abia state, a war that every generation has come to meet and know as “Awan Mboredem”. (The Igbo War). And a war that has continued to record more casualties.



Like the enactment of the story of David in the bible, where he visited his brothers at the war front, I took a very risky trip to where Ime, my brother informed me he and his other two brothers were, along with other youths and men of my community. To the people of Abama, we have to become a government to ourselves and defend ourselves and our ancestral land from needless attack and hostility from our hostile Igbo brothers, who boast of sophisticated armed and well-coordinated personnel, who are mostly machineries sponsored by their well-to-do brethren with businesses across the country and the world. After my interactions with the men in the front, and the women who have deserted their homes for safety, we are using this medium to call on the deputy governor of Akwa Ibom State, Obong Moses Ekpo, the deputy governor of Abia State; as well the Vice President of the federal republic of Nigeria, Prof. Yemi Osibanjo, whose offices caters for interstates boundary related issues in the country as their constitutional role, to please, as a matter of national urgency, set things, human and material resources in motion to make sure that the conflagration between these two boundary communities from their respective states does not degenerate to where more lives and properties are wasted, and the people unable to go about their daily and peaceful pursuits.

We are calling on the government to be more proactive in devising a working and lasting measure to solve, once and for all this age-long hostility that has never seized to claim lives in every generation. We cannot afford another disruption to our peace as a country; as we are already grappling with so much of such in the north. All intervention agencies, such as the Niger Delta Development Commission, (NDDC) the Boundary Commission, the Senator and House of Rep member representing the people from both sides, all and sundry, set in to ameliorate the suffering of those who have currently fled their homes and peace restored urgently. Let there be handshakes across the divides, initiated by the leaders of the two communities from the national assembly, and others to bring about lasting peace among our people.

God bless Abama

God bless Akwa Ibom State

God bless the federal republic of Nigeria.