Omor Vs Umumbo Crisis – True Story from Ayamelum

The people of Ayamelum agreed that the two towns, Omor and Umumbo, are best of friends; they intermarry and live together from time immemorial, and it was hard for them to believe there will be a disagreement or quarrel that will lead to the crisis experienced between the two towns that led to loss of lives and property on 4th and 5th of May, 2020. The nature of the people of two town were narrated by the people of Ayamelum. Read the true story from other people of Ayamelum.

THE PEOPLE OF OMOR

Omor is wired specially & differently by God. An average Omor man sees everyone as equal & deserves the same level of respect, trust & relationship. This has been exemplified by many who have associated with Omor people. They are truly peace loving. It is not new that a stranger can come to Omor, gets caught up by night fall & still finds a comfortable place to pass the night quite securely. This may have been provided by someone from Omor whom the visitor has not met or seen before. That's how Omor people see humans - people to cherish & freely relate with. But the major challenge an Omor man will have with you will emanate from trying to outsmart him, confuse him or drag his name or integrity to the mud for your own selfish reasons. Another value with the people of Omor is that taking the life of an Omor person is abominable. This is a very big issue they will stand to defend and show patriotism. They believe strongly in the value of life, that it shouldn't be easily taken away by anyone, especially when there are lots of ways to alternatively handle matters without shedding blood.

Omor is a town with a large heart, that about 10 to 20% of Umumbo people reside in Omor, and as well about 30 to 40% of Umumbo people have their source of incomes from Omor. People from Umumbo parboil and mill their paddy rice with free land spaces allotted to them at various mills in Omor. Their children attend schools, teach and engage in several other businesses which they have run smoothly without hindrance in Omor. There has never been an experience of an Omor man shooting an Umumbo man or chasing him or her out of Omor. “It was surprising to us that on the 5th of May, 2020 that some people of Umumbo kidnapped and killed the people of Omor carelessly like that because of misunderstanding in ordinary rice farm. It triggered provocation because the people of Omor had begged the people of Umumbo to release their sons for a round able talk like they did last year, 2019 cropping season. But I heard Umumbo did not respect the agreement reached,” one of our source from Ayamelum revealed.

THE PEOPLE OF UMUMBO

The people of Umumbo are peace loving too. They mingle a lot with the people of Omor. In 1998 that the people of Igbakwu had a crisis with Omor, as the security agents were not fair to Omor people, some of them ran to Umumbo and was accommodated there for some months. One thing with Umumbo is that they don’t forgive easily. You may mildly offend an Umumbo person, he will not show much anger but resort to charms and diabolic means of dealing with you. “I heard that in 2019 many Omor people died in Umumbo hands through such means. You know they mingle with one another and human beings are bound to quarrel,” one of the sources revealed. “A good number of people from Umumbo built houses, live at Omor and do business,” the source added.

THE GENESIS OF THE CRISIS

Stakeholders and leaders of thoughts in Umumbo had a meeting in 2018 with their people to chat way forward for the teeming youths. It was reported that Justice Okonkwo advised in the said meeting that the only way to beat unemployment among youths is to venture more into agriculture, cultivate more rice farms. He was further quoted to have pleaded with those who are civil servants to release their plots for their jobless youths. He was also exemplary and released his four plots. The source said he pleaded with one Mr Livi and Luke Anango to take only two out of their numerous plots of rice farm and donate others to their youths to fight unemployment in their town. They both agreed. But many needed plots of rice farm to cultivate in line with their advice. That was how ejection of Omor people who were alloted rice farms by the Anambra Irrigation Project started. Umumbo claimed those plots fall into the area they sold to the FG and therefore had to be occupied by them. The lots of the Anambra Irrigation Project in question include E71, E72, W4 and W7.

Umumbo youths invaded E71, E72, W4 in 2019 and some part of W7 in 2019 to scramble plots alloted to Omor people in these parts, and threatened them to leave. In the 2019, Umumbo youths invaded the land partly prepared by the Omor farmers in those area, threatened them away, owned and harvested the rice during harvest.

The people of Omor called the attention of Justice Okonkwo and he came back to village and convened a meeting of the rice farmers from Omor and Umumbo at Umumbo which was honoured by both parties. Among the representatives from Omor are Okonkwo James, Hon Ken Okolo and Barr Okonkwo Udegbunam. These were the Omor people invited to participate along with the farmers in conflict.

After series of meetings, it was agreed that four man committee will be nominated from each town to handle the peace agreement which was that the already cultivated plots of rice will be assumed to have been sold to the invaders from Umumbo and that all expenses incurred by Omor farmers on land preparation such as ploughing and chemical spraying must be balanced after harvesting the rice and that Umumbo people will not go to the plots again after the 2019 cropping season as the plots of rice farms belong to the people of Omor as assigned to them by the Anambra Irrigation Project.

The 8 man peace committee commenced their work and said that they will do cost benefit analysis to place the expenses of the plots at a cost that can be acceptable to both parties. They directed each team to provide the list of their Farmers. After submitting this list, the committee went to farms to verify the actual number of cases to be sure they won't have another challenge.

The source said that the job of the Hon. Ken Okolo-led committee started having problem when some members of Umumbo people began to be absent in meeting after they have harvested the rice peacefully. This killed the implementation of the agreement reached for peace. In one of their meeting, one Umumbo man said that paying for the plots is not part of the agreement, a statement that forced Hon. Ken to call Justice Okonkwo on phone to confirm what was agreed. From the call, Justice Okonkwo told them that paying for plots is part of the agreement. Despite confirmation from Justice Okonkwo, Umumbo people walked out on the meeting saying they cannot pay anybody for farming on their land.


THE STRAIN ON THE CARMEL’S BACK

This 2020 cropping season, Umumbo farmers went back to the farm alloted to Omor farmers by Anambra Irrigation Project. The people of Omor refused to be threatened away as in last cropping season. On the 4th of May, 2020, many farmers from Omor were molested & beaten up by Umumbo farmers. Attempt to resist them led to the kidnapping of four youths who were not able to escape them. The farmers from Omor came home to report the incidences. Security men were sent to Umumbo to ascertain if they were holding some people of Omor hostage and they denied it. Very much later in the evening, one of the youths escaped the hostage takers from Umumbo. He told the people of Omor that they were indeed kidnapped, and were about to be killed when he escaped. That led to broke down of law and order between the two towns on May 5, 2020.

Another version of the true story...

It was on the 4th May 2020 that less than 10 farmers from Umumbo had clash with same farmers from Omor over a piece of govt land managed by LAIP Omor.An Umumbo man Okoye Ojadi was matcheted and they took him away to Omor.It took the intervention of the Youth leader of Umumbo to get him released.After a while,a whole lot of people armed to the teeth matched into the town in drones,shooting sporadically.To my greatest surprise,another young man Ikegbuna Nweke Motoo was shot dead.I placed calls to HRH Igwe Oranu,Eze Anaukwu.His intervention made the Omor militias to retreat.On 5th May,as early as 5:00 am,the militias sneaked into the community through Umerum and Express axis,shooting indiscriminately and burning houses and properties.Over 55 homes were destroyed,cars,bicycle,motorcycles and seed rice.I did everything humanly possible to resist the attack from our youths but the level of destruction could have been more disastrous if not checked.The resistance from Umumbo youths led to the death of the ring leader of omor militias who was crowned with charms from head to toe.I thank immensely the Executive Governor of Anambra State for prompt action of sending securities whose presence is restoring peace.recall that Omor militias were the people that attacked Umumbo people twice,and no reprisal attack yet from our youths.All we clamour now is peace as the two communities had never quarreled before.The most annoying part is the destruction of our peoples assets in Omor by Omor people.Upstairs,cars,shops,plazas owned by Umumbo people in Omor were destroyed.As at yesterday 8thMay 2020,they have gone to all rice mills in Omor,separating rice belonging to umumbo people,maybe for their usual destruction.An umumbo man living in Omor was trapped and was killed.