– Emeka Esogbue
As I see it, the Ibusa tomorrow is dangerous. See Ogwashi-Uku, under a finely-organized monarchical leadership, has come up with a native-favoured template to ensure that every Ogwashi-Uku indigene owns land in his Ogwashi-Uku homeland.
In contrast, the Ibusa lands are exhaustively sold out to unknown Southeast people who are holding on to them and refusing contributory social development to the host community.
The Ogwashi-Uku Kingdom might have learnt a lesson from Okpanam and Ibusa versions of ‘ego di na oshia,’ and adjusted quickly with the agenda to preserve their communal lands for their children, which is a good development.
Okpanam, in light of this scenario, presents a picture of a community now overwhelmed by southeast inhabitants, a fate awaiting Ibusa in the next few years.
The implication of Ibusa’s tomorrow is rife with unfavorable consequences. The buyers of Ibusa and Okpanam lands have only decided to keep them for themselves. When the future comes, the Okpanam and Ibusa indigenes will strive and save so hard to rent apartments from people to whom they sold their heritage. When a foreigner owns over 200 plots of land with indigenes having none in their community, it is a big issue for the future.
Furthermore, the buyers of Ibusa lands do not know the Ibusa traditional class or even the environment well enough and some of the purchased lands may become developed to exist independently of the Ibusa community because the developers are rarely known, monitored, or regulated by communal law.
How’s it that the Ibusa community lost a brilliant generation of the political class in Nosike Ikpo, Willie Ikolodo, Ngadiolu, and others? Where are their replacements? It is a big question to be answered.
I think every son and daughter of Ibusa with a genuine interest in the community should be asking to know why a vacuum now exists in the post-Ikpo political era because as it stands, only Hon Innocent Esewezie is standing and holding forth the political baton for Ibusa. To the students of Ibusa politics, Obi Senator Nosike Ikpo now appears to be the last of Ibusa political titans.
If there’s any community where the political class, traditional class, elites, and youth class do not meet, that community is Ibusa. Everything is getting either disconnected or divisive and so much needs to be done for socio-political and economic restoration to happen.
The Ibusa community is losing so much politically, socially, and economically and our people should hurriedly unite to stand up to avenues of creating roadmaps for the future development of the community.
A few weeks ago, Ogwashi-Uku under the present traditional leadership issued the Admiralty University of Nigeria, Ibusa, an ultimatum over a change of name and all we heard from our Ibusa social media camp was that we won the Supreme Court judgment over the same land. As we speak, there has not been any official response from the Ibusa quarters also circulated on social media to counter the effect of the Ogwashi-Uku overdose except the brilliant scholarly efforts of Dr. Anthony Nwaezeigwe which enlightened our minds on the subject.
In the art of diplomacy, deterrence is a practice in which a threat of force by one party can convince another to refrain from some course of action. Deterrence is utilized to compel an actor to refrain from taking an action, leaving him to maintain the status quo. In this case, the Ibusa deterrence should have been a counter-response from the community’s leadership. If for anything, Ogwashi-Uku should have realized that we were alive, breathing, and had immense interest in what is our own.
Effectiveness in leadership arrangements cannot be overemphasized. The primary challenge that Ibusa faces is a lack of leadership source which leaves the people divided and often in varied sources of conflict. However, this can be easily resolved if the people recognizably organize themselves under the leadership of the Obuzor system to find a headway out of the myriads of challenges confronting them. A leaderless society does not make advancement and this is the case in the Ibusa community.
Pending divisive issues among the Ogbes, institutions, and individuals should be resolved amicably then the people can put together conferences to come up with acceptable roadmaps for the development of the community and pursue them unflaggingly.
The issue of abundant human capital available to the community seems to be “nmadu nor na unor, nmadu akua.” The people should get up very fast. Elites should show more actionable interest in the people’s communal affairs. The community requires the establishment of NGOs to orientate the youths to the path of society-building. Let there be an emphasis on NGOs.
Stand up Ibusa!
