By Frank Iroroh.
All days are created for a purpose, doomsday for men of evil – validava
16th May 2025 was not a pleasant day for the immediate past governor of Delta State, Sen A.I. Okowa. It was a day he will not forget in a hurry, a day he was literally laid on the ground, beaten up mercilessly, and trashed into the gutter by the courageous women of my the Idumuesah community. He never bargained for what he got. He left the community as dejected as a wet hen.
I guess some of us saw a recent viral video of the incident on the Internet, In the video clip the women of Idumuesah, my ancestral community could be seen interrupting and telling the almighty Ekwueme of the crumbled PDP to keep quiet and go to hell as he attempted to address them, lie to a people he considered ignorant, illiterate and unaware of the happenings around them, but to his greatest shock, the women did not allow him to utter a word, they bounced on him with vitriolic venoms, lay curses on him.
Als, in the video clip, the women could be seen pointing their ten fingers at Okowa, calling him a liar, useless and a shameless man. Waka!, Shege! Some of them went as far as to raise their wrappers and display their haunches to him.
In our culture, we know what it means when a woman raises her ten fingers towards a man; it becomes a taboo and a curse when she bends her half-naked butt towards the man; those acts are the worst demeaning gestures a woman could display to vent her anger on any man she considers useless.
It was some friends of mine, those who know me to hail from the community, that forwarded the video clip to me; they wanted to know what happened and why the immediate past governor of Delta State was so badly humiliated by the women of my community.
Although I was aware of the empowerment rally, as they call it, I did not bother to attend; I do not attend Okowa’s rallies, which he uses to brainwash and deceive the people his policies have impoverished.
However, the curiosity to know what drove the women to revolt against the dead Delta PDP’s maximum leader prompted me to carry out a painstaking investigation into the incident to find out why they viciously attacked the man they called their leader.
My findings were shocking, heartbreaking, and stranger than fiction, to the extent that skipping even the messy parts of it would render the report incomplete; it is a long one.
Please relax and enjoy Okowa’s act of wizardry and satanic policy of total annihilation of the Idumuesah clan.
It must be pointed out that the women’s riot was not planned nor sponsored, nor was it based on trivial issues like the sharing of Okowa’s bread of sorrow, he referred to as empowerment though that was what triggered the revolt. The protest was an impulsive action resulting from pent-up anger, an anger built up in the women over the years, against Okowa’s numerous scams and bad policies towards the Idumuesah clan.
Brief On Idumuesah Clan
Idumuesah clan is one of the fourteen clans that make up Ika North East LGA; it lies at the center of Ika Nation; what could be referred to as Ika Central, It is bounded by Owa clan in the North West, Abavo clan in the South, and Ute Okpu clan in the East, It is less than three minutes drive from Owa Alero, Okowa’s village.
It was a bustling agrarian community, well known for the cultivation of yams, cassava, palm produce, and varieties of vegetables.
Then Eke Market in Idumuesah was one of the busiest markets in Ikaland.Traders from Warri, Sapele, Lagos, and the Eastern part of the country troop Idumuesah to buy the abundant farm produce from the community.
It has a sizable population with
a voting strength of more than ten thousand registered voters; its large voting population in Boji Boji Owa and environs is not included.
Idumuesah remains one of the communities where the defunct PDP harvests votes during elections. It has voted for Okowa massively in all the elections he has contested.
During the 2015 Delta state governorship election (Okowa’s first term), the community gave him close to eight thousand solid votes, far more than the votes he got from his Owa Alero community.
Suffice said that Idumuesah was a thriving community before the political locust called Okowa invaded the community and destroyed everything he met.
Okowa’s bad policies in my community, the anger of the people.
As soon as Okowa became governor of Delta State, he introduced what he called urbanization, and the only village he urbanized in the entire Delta State was his village, Owa Alero. Urbanization of his village means depopulation of the Idumuesah clan, the next-door neighbor
Okowa deployed trillions of state resources to transform Owa Alero into a megacity overnight without extending a trickle of it to Idumuesah, the community that calls him brother.
How Okowa implemented his evil plans against Idumuesah
- He dualized the Owa Ekei road (constructed by ex-governor James Ibori, an Urhobo man) from Owa Ekei junction along the old Lagos-Asaba road Agbor and he stopped the road dualization at the Owa Alero roundabout and carried out palliative work on the section leading to Idumuesah. When he got to the boundary between Owa Alero and Idumuesah, he stopped the remedial work on the road. My community raised funds and mobilized the youth, who used cement and granite to repair the remaining bad portions of the road leading to the community.
- Okowa electrified the road with high-grade solar power, beginning from the same Owa Eke Junction down to every corner of Owa Alero, and stopped the electrification project at the same boundary between his community and Idumuesah Again, the pioneer students of Idumuesah Secondary raised funds to complete the electrification of the road to the community.
- Before Okowa’s 2019 reelection for a second term. He suddenly remembered Idumuesah, where he usually garnered huge votes. He pulled a fast one on the community. He deployed one of his road construction companies; they came, did some palliative work on the link road to my village, the portions already patched by the youths, and they announced that they were going to tar Idumuzugbo road (roughly 800m in length), one of the roads in the community. The company came with two bulldozers and pulled down all the shops belonging to bicycle repairers, Akara sellers, and other petty traders along the road. The shops where the villagers earn a living. They removed the two bulldozers as soon as the 2019 election was over and abandoned the road project.
- In late 2022, when Okowa was running for what he now admitted was an ill-conceived VP to Atiku and at the same time sponsoring his daughter for the Ika North East State Assembly seat, he then remembered Idumuesah again and brought back the two bulldozers to the same abandoned Idumuzugbo road and started filling them with granites. He added the late Chief Egbule (the Ozomor of Idumuesah, one of his stout supporters) road but removed the two bulldozers again as soon as the 2023 election was over. At the moment of writing this report, the two roads are uncomplicated and abandoned. Same with Agbogwe Road. Okowa plans to use them to campaign for his 2027 senatorial election and his daughter’s reelection campaign in 2027.
- During his first tenure, he announced that he was going to appoint one of Idumuesah’s sons, a refined gentleman, as chairman of the Delta State Independent Electoral Commission (DSIEC); before we dropped the cup of palm wine we were drinking in celebration of the news, abracadabra!Okowa announced his kinsman, the chairman of the commission.
- Within the same period, he came up with another scam; he told one of his core loyalists from Idumuesah that he would be the chairman of Ika North East Local Government Council after Bar Victor Ebonka’s first term. At the expiration of Ebonka’s first term, he called the young man and told him to allow Ebonka to go for a second term and reassure him that he would succeed the chairman after his second term. Today, the man who succeeded Ebonka as the chairman of Ika North East, LGC, is a serving police officer from the Ute Okpu clan who took a leave of absence. Birds do not allow anybody to trick them more than once; you may wonder why the Idumuesah community allows Okowa to trick them repeatedly. Of course, he has his allies in the community, those who are supervising his systematic destruction of Idumuesah, the Hitler generals who are feeding fat on the carcass of the community.
- For close to 20 years, Okowa laid siege on Idumuesah clan and took control of the politics of the community; he has not done any tangible projects in the community.
- The Palace Road, the road from the roundabout to the Palace, was constructed by NDDC and the partial fencing of Idumuesah Secondary School (built by late Prof A. Ali, former governor of the defunct Bendel State) was also done by NDDC. Every other project in the community was through community self-help.
- Idumuesah Secondary School remains the only secondary school in the entire Ika Federal Constituency that is not completely fenced. The school suffers from persistent vandalism and is very unsafe for learning as herdsmen occasionally turn it into their abode.
- I grew up to meet a functioning health center/maternity home in my community built by the colonial government long before Nigerian independence. But today, the health center is in ruins, without staff and medical supplies. In contrast Owa Alero, Okowa’s village has a well-equipped, Health Center, a General Hospital, and a state-of-the-art, advanced medical facility, the MOTHER AND CHILD HOSPITAL, OWA ALERO Okowa did not consider Idumuesah for at least a Cottage Hospital where doctors can come on scheduled visits to carry out routine medical checkups. He did nothing in this regard even after the yellow fever outbreak in the community that claimed several lives from late 2022 to 2023.
- The Eke Market in Idumuesah, one of the busiest markets in Ika land, is now an eyesore; traders no longer come to the village to buy and sell goods. There is hardly anything to buy because herdsmen have chased people off their farms.
- Herdsmen attack, Idumuesah kingdom is the epicenter of herdsmen savagery in Delta State. The railway station at the boundary between the community and Owa Oyibu has become a curse rather than a blessing to the community. It does appear that as soon as the terrorists from the North, disembarked at the station, they are directed to Idumuesah farmlands, where they unleashed mayhem on the poor farmers, visit the people with orgies rape and murder as they kidnapped many for ransom, my community has lost close to half a billion naira to ransom payments. An average of three to five persons are kidnapped in Idumuesah every week. The people can no longer go to the farm, palm wine tappers, and women who usually collect firewood for sale to fend for their families are all out of business. I am aware that insecurity is a national issue, but as the immediate past governor and acclaimed political czar of the people, Okowa is supposed to say something and do something to find a solution to the problem. His silence on the herdsmen’s attack in Delta North is questionable.
These are some of the burning issues the women were expecting Okowa to address when he visited the community. No way! Okowa did not empathize with the women who are mainly the victims of his inactions. he did tell them what he was doing to enable them to return to their farms. He ignored all the abandoned road projects he was supposed to have completed long ago. Do you know what he told them? He told them that he joined the APC to get Abuja connections and that he wanted to go back to the Senate in 2027. What has that got to do with the pains the women are going through? Even birds do not allow anybody to trick them more than once; you may wonder why the Idumuesah community continues to allow Okowa to trick them repeatedly. Of course, he has his allies, the Hitler generals, those who are feeding fat on the carcass of the community. They are the ones supervising his destruction of the Idumuesah clan.
My friends who accused me of being critical of Okowa’s clannish policy can easily understand why I am not his fan, why I refused to have his leash around my neck, and why I refused to cash out on my community’s well-being. A lean free man is better than a fat slave – Mamam Vatsa.
I must confess that I was unaware of the gravity of the destruction of my community by Okowa’s urbanization of his village until I went around the community. The damages are enormous; buildings are in ruins, overgrown with forest, and major roads linking different quarters have turned into bush paths.
The combined effects of a lack of good roads, light, portable water, accessible health facilities, and markets, coupled with herdsmen attacks, have made life in the community unbearable.
Today, the Idumuesah clan has one of the highest mortality rates in the country. Life expectancy in the community is far below the national average.
Under these circumstances, it is not surprising to find out that people are leaving the community in droves. Recently, about 50 families have relocated to Owa Alero, and countless others are trooping to Boji Boji Owa and its environs. I do not blame them because people will naturally relocate to areas where there are business opportunities and better living conditions. My only concern is that my people are acting out Okowa’s scripts. His policy is a well-orchestrated depopulation policy to relocate Idumursah people to Owa Alero, his community, and that is what is happening right now.
This is immoral, and if urgent action is not taken, Idumuesah clan and its rich cultural heritage will be no more, God forbid.
Way forward.
There is a need to send high-powered delegations to Delta State to come to the aid of the community.
In the interim, I will be collaborating with some concerned citizens of the community to organize a media tour of the community to draw the attention of the Federal governments and the international organization like UNESCO to the collateral damages Okowa’s urbanization policy has done to the community.
Idumuesah is a distressed and endangered community.
Scholars researching the impacts of urbanization on neighboring communities are encouraged to come to Idumuesah to collect all the data needed for their work.
Appreciation
I want to thank those who granted me interviews (though, they pleaded anonymity for fear of reprisal from Okowa’s mad dogs); the pains I saw in them awakened my spirit to do what I can do for the revival of my great kingdom The man died in whom who keep mute in the face of tyranny –Wole Soyinka,
I also want to use this medium to commend the brave women of my community, my great mothers, for their courage to rise and denounce Okowa’s clannism and treacherous policy on the community, your actions reminded me of the Aba women’s riot of 1929, where the women of Aba protested against colonial exploitation as their men put their tails behind their leg and run away.
I am aware that Okowa has unleashed his attack dogs on you to victimize, harass, and intimidate you, but be assured that your action on 16th May 2025 marks a turning point in the political emancipation of the Idumuesah clan. Your names will be engraved in gold in the history of the Idumuesah clan. That little feather pluck from Caesar’s wing will make him fly on ordinary pitch— William Shakespeare.
I am certain that Okowa will think twice before coming to Idumuesah to practice his Yahoo Yahoo politics.
Sign
Frank Iroroh
For and on behalf of the Concerned Citizens of Idumuesah Clan.
He can be reached at +2347030369724, WhatsApp only.
