At about 11.45am on the 11th December 2020, some four men in an old Toyota Camry car drove cautiously to the house of the Chairman of Otu Notedoghewii (Group for the Protection of Benin Land), Pastor (Dr) Festus Osayemwenre Egharevba in Uzebu area of Benin City, Edo State. They slowed down the vehicle at the front of a commercial caravan-like shop and were observing the house. Unknown to them Egharevba-s wife was watching the strange movement. She recognized them as Ikoro Ijaws. When she became convinced that they were on to a sinister motive she emerged from the house to get a better glimpse of them. On sighting her that their presence was detected they revved the car engine and sped off.
it would be recalled that Pastor Egharevba has been in the fore front against the Ijaws' attempt to expropriate Benin lands. So his stiff resistance to keep the Ijaws at bay through intellectual and legal processes revealing ancient and modern truths and his documented actions has earned him an arch enemy. Pastor Festus Egharevba narrated that he escaped three failed assassination and kidnap in late 2011 for his dogged fight to prosecute six Ikoro Ijaws when they attacked his home village, Obazuwa, as men were measuring land donated for the State Model Secondary School which they truncated. The almost nine year legal battle ended in March 2020 with the six men given a five months sentence.
The latest scheming is a fallout of recent development where one Ama Sibete forcibly brought plants and machinery into gazetted Utugberu area of Obazuwa to operate an illegal sand excavation. Egharevba is an Arrowhead of the Benin resistance to the Ijaw incursion which is making them to abhor him the more. The chairman, like other well-meaning Binis are annoyed that Sibete's brazen act came when Obazuwa's petition was already receiving petition with some Ijaw suspects already invited and under bail at the Police Zone 5 AIG's Office when Ama Sibete brought in his machinery by night. He told the police that it was an affront on constituted authority which could trigger inter-communal war.
However, Pastor Egharevba said he is not afraid of any person or group getting offended for standing up for the TRUTH even if some unpatriotic Benin elements were with them. He believes that no one can kill him because his mission on Earth is to propagate the truth through the Gospel of Jesus Christ and judicious human advocacy which has not been fulfilled.
He advised the Ijaws to embrace modern and judicious ways of advocacy instead of using archaic methods of unlawful combat that always pitch them against so many neighbours. He is of the firm opinion that brigandage cannot cow persons of his spiritual and intellectual level to malicious subjugation.