Map of Cross River State in South South Nigeria
By PATRICK ABANG, Calabar –
An environment expert and Executive Director of Rainforest Resources Development Centre (RRDC) Prince Odey Oyama has raised the alarm over the alleged clandestine transactions conducted by Barr Ichire Imo Okim and the Council of Chiefs of Effi Community, members of Effi Community.
According to him, “Now that the silence is beginning to threaten us, our ancestral heritage, and our posterity, the rule: “SILENCE IS GOLDEN” has ceased to be acceptable anymore”
“Recall that when it was demanded of Barr Ichire Imo Okim to make public accounting of the proceeds from the transactions he had conducted on Effi Community at Mike’s Plant, he brazenly asserted that his responsibility is only to the Council of Chiefs of Effi Community; and to no one else.
“‘And we maintained SILENCE. That silence has come back to haunt us as a ghost.”
“Today Barr Ichire Imo Okim, acting in concert with the Council of Chiefs of Effi Community, has devised a new and dangerous plot to negotiate Effi Community lands and property with Chinese foreign nationals, without disclosing the details of the transactions (in the form of a Memorandum of Understanding – MOU) to the Elders, sons and daughters of Effi Community”
“Our SILENCE has finally risen up to threaten us and our ancestral heritage.”
” Today, the level of brazenness has escalated. Barr Ichire Imo Okim, acting in concert with the Council of Chiefs of Effi Community, has the temerity to demand that Community Leaders of Effi Community should endorse the obscure contract document he has developed to bond Effi Community with uncertified foreign Chinese Nationals, without being given the opportunity to peruse and own copies of the documents they are being asked to sign, with supreme urgency”
” It is now time for us to *rise up now* and reject the devices, antics, and evil plots of Barr Ichire Imo Okim and the Council of Chiefs of Effi Community over our common heritage. Otherwise, the people of Effi Community will soon end up as a people alienated from their ancestral heritage”
. ‘We are now facing the most brazen assaults on our ancestral heritage from within. The persons to whom we entrusted the safeguarding and custody of our ancestral heritage are exactly the ones that, driven by insatiable greed, are forming evil conspiracies and trading out our cherished ancestral heritage with extreme recklessness’
In his reaction Barr. Ichire Okim said: “”Let me state clearly here that it’s because of an inciting and faultfinding letter written by one Odey Oyama to the Immigration authority that is generating so much dust like this,”
“The above statement about me is extracted from the letter allegedly sent to the press by Barr Ichire Imo Okim. I wish to state that I am not surprised that Barr Ichire Imo Okim appears to be greatly offended by my opposition to his crafty surreptitious deals of fostering a business relationship between the Chinese foreign nationals and the Traditional Rulers of Effi Community; without any reference whatsoever to the indigenous owners of Effi Community.
“As the sharp legal adviser to the Effi Traditional Rulers Council that he is, he stands to lose a lot if the “business”_is not allowed to materialize.
“Because of his share in the *_”business affair”_* Barr Ichire Imo Okim is ready to call me names, in the hope that I would be dissuaded from following up the matter.
“Because of the hope of monetary gains that Barr Ichire Imo Okim is expecting to rip off from this business, Barr Ichire Imo Okim would not care whether or not his Chinese business associates are targeting Effi Community for the setting up a China Town. After all he hopes that the money he would make from the Chinese deal would be sufficient to make him kick start his life somewhere else.
“The modus operandi of Barr Ichire Imo Okim are not totally unfamiliar. It is recalled that at the end of proceedings on Mike’s Plant (or Timberlex) the final accounts on the transactions have remained shrouded in secrecy.
“By reason of all the above, Barr Ichire Imo Okim is willing to hide the Chinese and their business partners, the chiefs (of Effi Community) away from the probing eyes of the Nigerian Immigration Service.
“I will not allow Barr Ichire Imo Okim to get away with this treachery”, he said.
