A farmer and former school principal, Sir Moses Orji, has countered the claim by Amagu Development Union that former Senate President, Anyim Pius Anyim, is innocent of the charges of alleged land grabbing at Ovumte Amagu Ishiagu community in Ivo local government of Ebonyi State.
In a statement, the leaders of the community had said the allegation of land grabbing against Anyim was unfounded.
According to the leaders, in a five-page press statement signed by the chairman of Amagu Development Union, Mr. Livinus O. Uka, and four executives of the union, the allegation was untrue and meant to tarnish the image of Anyim.
However, in a statement by Barr. Ogbonna Paul Arochukwu, attorney to Orji, who claimed to be one of the victims of the alleged land-grabbing, his properties as well as those of other people were illegally and forcefully seized.
Orji said he had a legitimate title to his land and the seizure was unlawful.
Faulting the position of the leaders of the union, he said: “It is most unfortunate that executives of the Amagu Development Union and its major principal clearly do not know the history of Ovumnte land and yet they have taken steps to forcefully and unlawfully appropriate the said land from its owners.
“This is why they have refused to enter a defense in the ongoing court case instituted against them by Sir Moses Orji, but rather preferred to be in contempt of Court by continuing the malicious destruction of Sir Moses Orji’s farm despite the matter being in Court.”
The statement reads further: “Sir Moses Orji was present at a meeting on 31st December, 2019, where Chief Pius Anyim declared that everybody living at Ovumnte-Amagu was a ‘tenant’ and that he intended to develop Ovumnte-Amagu into ‘a modern residential city’. However, Sir Moses Orji who is a highly educated individual and one of the oldest persons in Amagu community never saw the need to object such declarations because he holds a legitimate title to his land and believes that issues regarding lawful title land are not matters to be determined by gullible community union executives hand-picked by powerful persons desperately seeking to unlawfully appropriate lands belonging to poor individuals of the community. Moreover, it is on record that lawyers acting on the instructions of Sir Moses Orji wrote a letter dated 2nd January, 2020, to the President of the Amagu Development Union advising him and members of the Amagu Land Committee not to trespass into Sir Moses Orji’s farm. The receipt of the said letter was acknowledged by President of the Amagu Development Union.
“The claim that Sir Moses Orji and his family ‘were allocated one thousand square meters of plot of land in the area’ is a very malicious claim that is aimed to distract. This is because Sir Moses Orji never supported the ongoing unlawful seizure of lands and eviction of land owners at Ovumnte-Amagu and therefore never paid the 1.2 million Naira which the executives of the Amagu Development Union and its Land Committee forcefully demanded from him as a condition to leave parts of his farm.”
Orji said to prove his case, the National Human Rights Commission, human right organizations, and relevant government agencies could independently conduct investigations into “the ongoing unlawful seizure/destruction of farm lands and properties and the eviction of poor land owners at Ovumnte-Amagu, Ishiagu in Ivo LGA of Ebnyi State.”
