Protesting villagers from the UMUEZEANI community, Amaeke –Ngwo, in Udi local government area of Enugu state Tuesday shutdown the Ama Brewery accusing the Nigerian Breweries Plc of divide and rule.

The villagers including women, youths and the elderly carried placards, barricading front of the company premises and demanded for withdrawal of some management staff from the Brewery.

Some of the placards read: “Give us our Christmas gifts; “Conflict sponsors must go, “BM and PAM must go” among other inscriptions.

Chairman of Umuezeani community, Evangelist Okezie Amujiogu said that his people were expressing grievances over the happenings at Nigeria Breweries Plc where they are the host community.

“The Public Affairs Manager and the Brewery Manager are instigating problems in our community. They are recognizing people that are not in authority in the community, using and sponsoring them to cause problems and breach of peace in the community.

“On the issue of economic empowerment, they are collaborating with them. They went to court and brought a fraudulent court injunction, restraining me and others from parading ourselves as executive members of Umuezeani community and our people are not happy about it.

“Some of the things the company is supposed to be doing for us such as contracts that are meant for the community, the NB staffs collaborated with a few of our community members to execute the contracts and share the money.

“Instead of discussing with the community, they are collaborating with only four members of our community to use our entitlements to fight us.

“They are sitting on an empowerment programme which the NB head office gave Ama Brewery order to execute for us, saying that we are not the authority. The Brewery Manager was mandated to reshuffle some of the contracts meant for the community but he doesn’t want to do it because he is collaborating with few to use it for their own selfish needs.

“These are what made our people to be aggrieved and they are not happy at all. We have waited but up till this moment they have not called us. They don’t want to recognize us as the authority of the community.

“Our demands are that we need to harmonies the contract list. They should let us know those executing the community contracts so that everybody can benefit. The empowerment programme and the staff should stop sponsoring court matters against the host community. We have not received any Christmas gifts from the company,” Amujiogu narrated.

NewsPortfolio further gathered that for more than 15 years of NB plc in Umuezeani, it has less than 4 indigenes as a staff.

As at the time of filing this report, all efforts to get the reactions of the Public Affairs Manager proved abortive as his phone lines were off

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Give them one crate of beer. All is in order