The Indigenous People of Aba Ngwa, comprising of all the 24 indigenous communities of Aba North and Aba South have said they reject in totality, a comment that Aba, their ancestral home, is a “no man’s land”.
Gathering under the umbrella body of the Aba Ngwa People’s Forum, the people after their extraordinary meeting that took place on Thursday, October 19, 2023 at Osusu Aba Town Hall said that that the comment made by Governor Alex Otti in a viral video about Aba is unacceptable to them.
Arising from the well-attended meeting, the Forum in a communique signed by Mr Ogechukwu Ogbonna, Engineer Greg Obinna and Mr Chintua Nwagba on behalf Indigenous the people urged Governor Otti to give the indigenous their deserved respect.
The forum said that the indigenous people of Aba have been living in peace with the non-indigenous people and are not ready to accept any form of inciting comments that could bring dissatisfaction or acrimony between the other residents and indigenous people.
Part of the communique reads, “That we acknowledge that Dr Alex Otti is the duly elected Governor of Abia State whose duties, functions and actions are defined and guided by the Constitution of Nigeria and some other extant laws.
“That Aba is owned by the indigenous people drawn from the 24 communities of Aba-la-Ohazu and that we express our utmost disappointment at the comment credited to Dr Alex Otti, the Governor of Abia State, wherein he described Aba as a no-man’s land.”
The Forum said that they are greatly worried that Aba has been deliberately excluded by the Governor in his appointments into the State Executive Council, which led to him denying Aba South Local Government Area a Commissioner slot and in the entire Aba people in the leadership of the markets.
The indigenous Aba people also stated that the proposed appointment of some non-indigenous people as Mayors of Aba North and Aba South is not only unconstitutional, but also an aberration, stressing that they will not bother themselves with something they know is unconstitutional.
They argued that the Governor’s statement that he will appointment non-indigenous person to head local government area in Aba because Aba is a metropolitan city is unacceptable to them as a people because in other neighbouring cities like Port Harcourt, Owerri and even in Awka and Onitsha, such will never happen.
“That appointing a non-indigene as the Transition Committee Chairman of Aba is against the Abia State Local Government Transition Edict of 2002 which stipulates that the person appointed as a chairman shall be a native of the local government area.
“The appointing a non-indigene as the said ‘Mayor of Aba’, which has been said to be unconstitutional, is an insult on the sensibilities of the peaceful and hard-working indigenous people of Aba.
“The actions of the Governor of Abia State in relation to appointments are tantamount to pushing the indigenous people of Aba into extinction, which is totally unacceptable to us.
“We shall resist any attempt capable of inciting violence in Aba which the actions and utterances of the Governor are pointing towards.
“In line with the old saying that he who comes to equity must come with clean hands, should the Governor plan to unconstitutionally foist a non-indigene on Aba as a Transition Committee chairman, he should do so in Umuahia, Bende, Arochukwu and other local government areas.
“Him asking people who are not comfortable with the planned appointment of a non-indigene Mayor of Aba to go and hit their heads on the wall, is unbecoming of a governor elected by the people and capable of causing civil unrest in Aba.”
The Forum urged the governor, in the spirit of equity and fairness, to balance his appointments among the ethnic extractions that make up Abia State.
