Tension has gripped Ebonyi State after suspected warlords gruesomely beheaded a middle-aged farmer, Dick Nnachi, in Oso Edda, Edda Local Government Area, leaving the community in shock and mourning.
The chilling incident occurred on Thursday on Nnachi’s farmland, with his severed head still missing at press time.
Announcing the development during the New Yam Festival at Nguzu Edda Community Primary School, the visibly shaken council chairman, Chima Ekumankama, declared that he was contemplating resignation over the unending cycle of killings.
In honour of the slain farmer, a moment of silence was observed during the celebration — a symbolic gesture of a community bleeding under violence that has defied solutions for years.
> “Sometimes I feel like resigning to go back to my business because each time I see the blood of an Edda man dropped on the floor, it pains me. If ever you hear I have resigned, know that this is the reason. I am seriously pained,” Ekumankama lamented.
The chairman passionately appealed to Governor Francis Nwifuru, represented at the event by Speaker of the State House of Assembly, Moses Odunwa, to immediately establish a joint security task force in Oso Edda.
> “Our people are being slaughtered. Each time they cry to me, I shed tears. Please, Your Excellency, we don’t want the spilling of blood anymore. Deploy the army, police, and every security outfit to this land before more lives are wasted,” he pleaded.
The killing has once again exposed the deep-seated and bloody land dispute between Oso Edda and their Amasiri neighbours in Afikpo Local Government Area — a conflict that has lasted decades, claiming lives and destroying property worth billions of naira despite numerous government interventions.
Confirming the gruesome incident, the State Police Public Relations Officer, SP Joshua Ukandu, disclosed that a team of security operatives had been deployed to the disputed area. He warned residents of both warring communities to stay clear of the buffer zone demarcated by security agencies.
Despite successive administrations’ efforts to broker peace, the Oso Edda–Amasiri land crisis remains a festering wound. The latest beheading, community leaders fear, could ignite yet another round of reprisals unless urgent measures are taken.
PIONEER NEWS 