Your claim over Ogidigben EPZ lands is inflammatory, group cautions WIPMG

A Pan Itsekiri Socio-Cultural group, Itsekiri Consolidated Movement, ICM, has described the claim by Warri Ijaw Peace Monitoring Group, WIPMG that 2,500 hectares of the 2,800 hectares of land, earmarked for the Ogidigben Export Processing Zone, EPZ project belongs to Gbaramatu and Ogulagha Communities, “as inflammatory, inciting, vexatious and embedded in absolute falsehood”.

The ICM in an apparent reaction to statement credited to Chairman of WIPMG, Chief Patrick Bigha cautioned that if recent utterances made by WIPMG and Gbaramatu Chiefs on “wild claims to major parts of lands to be used for the Ogidigben EPZ project is not immediately halted forthwith, it may degenerate into fresh crisis between Itsekiri and their Ijaw neighbours. A situation which will provide further distraction to the present administration on issues of peace and security”.

The Itsekiri group in a statement signed by its Chairman, Oritsegbemi Besidone and Public Relations Officer, Franklin Metsese averred that the comment of Chief Patrick Bigha and Gbaramatu Council of Chiefs “is a testament to insinuations that Itsekiris are not safe under the leadership of President Goodluck Jonathan”.

The ICM statement is coming on heels of similar rebuttal made by prominent Warri Chief and Itsekiri Rights Activist, Chief Ayirimi Emami last week in the Vanguard Newspaper against an earlier claim by Gbaramatu Council of Chiefs to ownership of majority of lands meant for the EPZ project.

According to ICM, “ethnic nationality including Ijaws are working and investing in the EPZ project”, just as it noted that “nobody is a war lord in the field of battle”.

The Itsekiri group further averred that the statement credited to Chief Bigha and his Co-travelers “are strategy to misguide innocent Nigerians who are not conversant with the true history of land ownership in Warri as well as to frustrate moves toward the ground breaking ceremony of the Ogidigben EPZ”.

The group quipped that the geographical map on the land mass on which the Ogidigben EPZ project is situated is clear for everyone to see and further proof of the fact that the legacy EPZ project is domiciled in Itsekiri homeland.

The Warri Ijaw Peace Monitoring Group, WIPMG, an Ijaw assembly in Delta State had weekend warned the people of Ugborodo , an Itsekiri community in Warri South-West local government area of Delta State against causing another crisis in Warri with their claims to the ownership of Warri lands.  

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