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From Judex Okoro, Calabar
The Oyadama community in Obubra, Cross River, has called on Governor Ben Ayade to implement all court judgments on the Nko/Onyadama boundary dispute.
The state government has also been urged to publish the White Paper on all panels of inquiry that had been set up to look into the lingering communal crisis.
Oyadama in Obubra and Nko in Yakurr local government area have been engaged in a fratricidal war over farmland for decades, leading to wanton destruction of lives and property.
Spokesman of the Onyadama community, Festus Obo Ntor, who made this plea during a media interaction on Thursday in Calabar, said the Nko/Onyadama crisis has been on since 1928, adding that the problem recently escalated this year with several people killed with some soldiers injured.
Ntor said the refusal of the government in implementing court judgments and releasing White Paper on panels of inquiry is making the crisis fester with attendant loss of lives and property.
Listing the court judgments on the crisis, he said “Suit No. 6/40, (E/1940) as well as a counterclaim with Suit No. 7/40 (E/10/1940) which were consolidated on 6th November 1942, judgment was delivered against the Nko people on the 17th December 1947.
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“That judgment clearly delineated the boundary of both communities to be the Utara Stream as shown in Survey Plan of 6/6/43.
“Not satisfied with the judgment of the lower court at Enugu, the Nko people filed an appeal and the same was determined at the West African Court of Appeal, Lagos in Appeal No. WACA 2800, Suit No. E/9/1940 and E/10/1940.
“The case was dismissed with cost against the Nko people on the 7th day of April 1949. The report of the above being that the boundary point between the two communities remained the Utara Stream and not Okwo River as falsely and reasonably claimed by Nko People”, he said.
According to him, these judgments are part of the government’s official records and the government which entered the judgments through one of its essential arms cannot claim to be ignorant of them.
He stressed that government owes it as a duty to enforce these judgments as severally requested as Nko community has been emboldened by the government’s inability to enforce court judgments, adding that former Governor Liyel Imoke also set up a judicial commission of inquiry with very robust terms and had as chairman, Hon. Justice Ekeng Efiong.
He regretted that the panel’s recommendations were not implemented just as Ayade in 2016 set up a panel of inquiry headed by former deputy governor Efiok Cobham and nothing came out of the panel’s report.
