RESIDENTS of Okuama-Ewu community, Ewu Clan in Ughelli-South Local Government Area of Delta State may unwittingly be heading for a collision course with Delta State government, given their seeming refusal to accept the Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, camp being prepared for them at Ewu.
The residents returned to their homeland last Wednesday from the forests where they took cover immediately after the Nigerian Army pulled out its troops from the riverside community, after a 54-day siege.
The governor, Sheriff Oborevwori, who worked behind closed doors to get the army out of Okuama-Ewu was not in support of locating an IDP camp in Okuama-Ewu, which was why the government chose Ewu, the traditional headquarters of Ewu clan.
The government’s reason was essentially the terrain of the small community.
The Management Committee of the IDP inaugurated by the state government was rounding off the preparations of the Ewu site when the governor announced the exit of the army from Okuama last Wednesday.
The residents, already against the plan to move to any IDP camp outside its homeland, filed to the Okuama-Ewu hours after the army vacated, were fast enough to ambush intruders from neighboring communities who came to loot irons, rods, and zinc, which led to a bloodbath.
We learned that the IDP camp management committee, headed by the former Editor of the Guardian newspaper, Mr. Abraham Ogbodo, did not expect the residents to move to Okuama-Ewu, as the government planned to first receive them at the Ewu camp, after which the planning for resettlement and rehabilitation would commence.
However, some residents told us yesterday: “God worked for us, the issue of going to Ewu, which we initially resisted, has been taken care of. By divine arrangement, we are now back to our community.
”The government should site an IDP camp here for us in Okuama because we have no homes to sleep in, and at the same time, commence the plan of rebuilding homes, which the army deliberately destroyed.
“We raised the alarm that our neighbors were looting our farms and fishing traps while the army was there. but they did not believe us. You saw that no sooner did the soldiers leave than they came in full force to reap from our sorrows.
“However, some of us knew their strategy and returned as quickly as we got the news, which was how our people ran into those looting our devastated homeland.
“Our governor, Oborevwori, who we praised for getting the soldiers out of our community, may not understand our predicament, but we beg him to forgive us, as we do not intend to move to the Ewu IDP camp.”
The chairman of the Ewu IDP camp management committee, which embarked on a total renovation of the structures for the camp in Ewu Grammar School, Ewu, Mr. Ogbodo, told Us last week that the comp would be ready this week.
“The work is far gone. The projection is to round off the camp preparation by this weekend and invite the governor for inspection, and then take a date to open the camp sometime next week,” he said.
On the number of refugees expected at the IDP camp, he said: “We do not have a clear idea of the number of people that will be coming to the camp but we have created a capacity to take about 400 people in the first instance.
“The place, I mean the entire camp area, is expansive and we can quickly expand the functional facilities and operations to take more people if that becomes the case.
“The delay was because of the renovation required to make the camp suitable for the IDPs. The place was as if it did not exist before. We are battling dilapidated buildings with no roof, no windows, and nothing functional.
“If the camp had been prepared before the committee’s inauguration, the process would have been smoother.”
Ogbodo indicated that Governor Oborevwori would inspect the camp before declaring it open.
