Soldiers didn’t invade Ikebiri community – Monarch

Paramount ruler of Ikebiri community, Southern Ijaw Local Government Area, Bayelsa State, Francis Ododo Timi Ike IIX, has debunked the news making the rounds that armed soldiers invaded the community.

The Monarch’s rebuttal followed a newspaper report that armed soldiers invaded the community on December 15, in two gun boats to interfere in a peaceful family meeting.

Ododo said it was false, baseless and misleading.

The Liaison officer, office of the Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta and Presidential Amnesty Programme, Piriye Kiyaramo, in a statement on Monday, described the news report as an attempt by some unscrupulous persons to instigate crisis between youths in the Niger Delta region and the military high command, with a view to resuming fresh crisis in the area.

The Paramount ruler said that Ikebiri Kingdom, comprising Ikebiri 1, 2 and 3, communities, has been very peaceful and that at no time was it attacked by military personnel as contained in the said publication.

He explained that, on December 15, 2017, being his late father’s Remembrance Day, he hosted a military patrol team that was on routine patrol duties, while an inter-church swimming competition and canoe race which were part of the Remembrance Day event in the Kingdom was going on.

The traditional ruler, a retired school principal, who expressed shock at the publication, narrated how he pleaded with the military patrol team to spend some time in the community while his late father’s remembrance day activities lasted, explaining that he also briefed the patrol team of a Community Development Committee (CDC) chairmanship election in the community.

He added that the CDC Chairmanship position which was being rotated among the different families that make up the community under a zoning system, had been earlier zoned to a particular,

family (Usaku-wari) in a general meeting of the entire kingdom, pending the selection and official presentation of the family’s candidate to the community to be sworn-in at the expiration of the current tenure of the CDC.

The royal father lamented that the reporter, never bothered to hear from him or any of the family chiefs, before going to press,

pointing out that neither the military spokesperson or the police was contacted for confirmation of such a very sensitive report that alleged military invasion of an oil bearing community in the Niger Delta region, bearing in mind that the publication could trigger violent reactions from stakeholders in the region.

And after hosting them, that very day there was a family meeting of Usaku-lubo (Usaku-wari) to select a candidate for the position of the next community development committee chairman for the whole community.

The military personnel in their normal routine patrol duties saw the crowd and came in a bid to pre-empt any breakdown of law.

“I personally informed the military personnel that a family was trying to hold a family and that it would be good to have them around. So the military personnel agreed and stayed and at the end of all the events, there was no iota of violence in the community.

“Just to confirm what am saying, as I have earlier said, that day marked a remembrance for my late father. Even after the meeting there was footballs match among the churches that took place from 4 to 6pm”, the royal father reiterated.

He wondered how a community that was been invaded by the military would still come together to carry out those water sporting events in the community.

“So am here saying that what that guy has said is a complete lie. He just wants to trigger or incite youths, not only in our community, but in the Niger Delta region to go against the military.

Mathew Dadiya, Abuja