I was kidnapped for refusing to sell land – Anambra community leader

A community leader and Vice Chairman of Obunagu Achalla village in Enugu Agidi community in Njikoka Local Government Area of Anambra State, Ozo Ozoemena Okeke, has alleged a plot by some of his kinsmen to kill him saying he was kidnapped twice because he refused to sell community lands.

He stated this when he spoke with journalists at his country home in Obunagu Achalla, on Sunday.

According to him, the incident has led to his kidnapping twice between 2023 and 2024, saying that it was God who saved his life, apart from the payment of ransoms to the suspected kidnappers.

Okeke disclosed that it was the evil scheme of four of his kinsmen allegedly working in secret alliance with suspected kidnappers to eliminate him by all means for being a stumbling block to their grand design to continue to appropriate parts of the land and sell the same to highest bidders while the community and its people continued to wallow in abject poverty.

He said, “My first experience was on October 17, 2023. It was the initial period the road in front of my house was being graded, which they claimed that I sold the land to someone, but I did not sell any land.

“Thinking that I had sold a piece of land, these people invited kidnappers to kidnap me so that I would bring out the money suspected to be paid for the land.

“I think this set of suspected kidnappers are poor because they collected all my foodstuff including garri, palm oil, salt among others. They discovered I had only N22.00 in my bank account through phone and no other bank accounts.

“They wondered where the money they claimed that I realised from the land should be. They concluded it was a mere allegation and I was freed.”

“The second invasion was in August 2024. After the peace meeting with my people, the kidnappers invaded my house again around 4 pm that fateful day and took me into the bush to Urum in the Awka North local district before proceeding towards one shrine in Ukwulu. I stayed three days before they released me.”

But in a swift reaction when contacted, the Chairman of Obunagu-Achalla in Enugwu Agidi Community, Emeka Ementa, denied any link with suspected kidnappers that kidnapped Okeke at any given time nor any knowledge about the incident.

He admitted that the community at a meeting under his leadership agreed to suspend and ostracise Okeke and others for their sabotage of the corporate existence of the community by aligning with the Ezinano Awka community on the controversial peace deal with Obunagu-Achalla village in Enugwu Agidi Community over their land.

“Well, I don’t have any contact with any kidnap syndicate, I don’t even intend to. I am only saying that he(Okeke) should change his way of life; he has been known for this over the years.

“The community only took normal cautions to suspend him from our meetings and other activities. The decision was taken at a general meeting, not personal to me. So, I wouldn’t think and I never thought about that. Why would I kidnap him, for what?

“I have never heard of this kidnap of a thing. It is him forging this kidnap thing. It’s like a drama to me; it’s a forgery and I have not heard of it anyway. But Okeke has been known for this kind of behaviour.”

On the question of the ancestral relationship between Ezinano Awka and Enugwu Agidi people over the land in dispute, Ementa explained, “The land is called Agu-Nawgu because Nawgu people were living there before and were part of it.

“After Nawgu was removed by the six communities of Awka, Isu, Enugwu Agidi, Nawfia, Amawbia and I think Okpuno. It’s a land got after a conquest and shared into six, everybody has theirs. Awka has its own and so are other communities.

“So, a major part of that land is where the Awka people are now contesting with us in court. The whole of that land, part of which is our ancestral land, they are joining both the ancestral land and that of Nawgu to the place they are dragging with us in court.

“The court in its unanimous decisions gave it to us in three court sessions, the Awka court, High Court and the Appeal Court.

“We are now asking the state government to use its good offices to intervene because Enugwu-Agidi has suffered so much.”