Ebonyi community rejects siting of international airport site in ‘ancestral home’

The people of Aguogboriga, Umuoghara in Ezza North local government area of Ebonyi State, have appealed to the state government to leave their community and take a vast empty land in Agu Umuoghara for the construction of International Airport.

They made the appeal on Monday during a protest in the area alleging that over 3,000 houses in their community have been marked for demolition as a result of the project.

The protest which involves aged women, men, school children, youths and girls of Amuzu and Oriuzor, who trooped out en masse and protested the extension of the project site to their community, accused some stakeholders in their area of masterminding the extension to enable them to build hotels and other facilities in the area.

The protesters carried their properties to the site to protest the acquisition of their lands immediately they sighted bulldozers clearing lands in Aguogboriga community.

Addressing reporters in the area, some of the protesters including Elder Aguiyi Oke, Elder Ignatius Akochi, Elder Alieze Igwe, Nwafor Toochukwu, Anyigor Innocent, Mrs. Obioma Okohu and Mrs. Cecilia Nwafor said they were not against construction of the International Airport but that their Aguogboriga community which they described as their ancestral homes should not be included as the project sites as according to them, they can’t leave the area.

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They appealed to the state government to take a vast land in Agu Umuoghara which they said was larger than the whole project site for the construction of the airport.

They explained that their crops have been destroyed with bulldozers and raised the alarm that hunger was imminent in the community even as they lamented that no records of the crops and land owners were taken before the bulldozers started clearing the lands in the community as a sign that they would be compensated.

“In the history of Ezza Nation, no village has ever collapsed to migrate into other community for cluster or resettlement,” they said.

This demonstration is coming barely few days Governor Dave Umahi secured the approval of President Muhammadu
Buhari and Federal Aviation Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) for the construction of an International Airport after securing some lands in Ezza North and Ezza South local government areas of the state.

Umahi had last week invited all the stakeholders in Ezza North and south to a meeting in the government house and promised to pay compensation to those that may be displaced as a result of the Airport project.