Community Protests Illegal Acquisition Of Land By Monastry

Tension is now mounting in Ibite Awhum Village in Udi Local Government Area of Enugu State as hundreds of women, youths and elders staged a peaceful demonstration to protest what they described as an unwarranted and unjustifiable encroachment on their land by inmates of a Catholic Monastery located in the area.

The aggrieved  women vowed  that  they would go stark naked during the next round of demonstrations should the Mount Calvary Cistercian Monastery  refuse to heed their demand to back off and stop trespassing in the  parcel of land in the area which the community considers their only farmland.

Our correspondent reports that the placard bearing villagers carried out their demonstrations before police men who had come to investigate a case of threat to life and malicious damage leveled against them by the monks, described the allegations as “malicious and unholy effort” to deceive the police and the public as to the real issues in dispute between them and the community.

The Tide further learnt that officers from the Zone 9 Police Headquarters, Umuahia, Abia state,   had last month swooped down on the village and arrested some youths at the instance of the monks.

The villagers said that they had long resisted the attempts by the Monks to illegally expand the land given to them by the community in 1970 and both sides had clashed on several occasions in the past.

They  also alleged that the monks had without authority extended the original space granted to them by more than 100 per cent and were now making efforts to seize the whole farmland of the people and had been bribing the authorities and using law enforcement agents to pursue their alleged illegal venture.

The immediate cause of the current crisis, it was gathered was the community’s removal of beacons the monks had  allegedly  mounted in the night on the community’s land which if allowed to stand, would give the monastery more land than that owned by the indigenes of the host community.

Some of the placards displayed during  demonstration Thursday  read, “Our generosity has become our own undoing”, “The hood does not make the monk-we have found out the hard way”, “Confine yourselves to the land we gave you”, “Unacceptable” Soul winners have become land grabbers”, among others.

A spokes person for the community, Mr Amaechi Anugu in a chat with newsmen said all the women in the village had resolved to go naked before the monks to press home their grievances, adding that the whole village had vowed to continue its agitation against the monks until they let go of their land.

He explained that the action being threatened by the women was regarded Igboland as the highest form of protest against oppression adding that who ever compelled an innocent person to go naked in protest against his actions was bound to suffer severe consequences.