Kidnapping in Owukpa: The question of leadership vacuum by Ali Adoyi

The leadership vacuum in our dear community, Owukpa is gradually turning to a self-inflicted injury that may spare no one.

When the head is missing, the other body parts can hardly function. The head ‘houses’ the engine room of the body (the brain).

In recent times, 3 major crimes threatening the community to its foundation have destabilized our once peaceful home. We now have our shares of armed robbery, assassination, and kidnapping we thought were far away from us.

Ignoring, for now, the scary and horrific implication of the trend, I will briefly look at the absence of leadership as a major concern.

First, by leaving the stool empty for a long time, our protective and jealous land ( Aje’ Owukpa) has abandoned us to our problem.

A traditional leader is the custodian of a people’s culture and when there is a vacuum, like in our case, God will dissert the land. There is a symbiotic relationship between the physical and the metaphysical. Leadership is the representative of God’s own throne and when there is an absence, God is automatically deprived of his place in the society.

When there is a leadership vacuum, the people feel insecure and able-bodied youths flee to the city in search of better protection. The community is consequently left porous. Who will now defend Owukpa in the absence of the youths? I don’t blame the rural-urban migration among our youths. When the land has been made unattractive due to leadership tussle, who will be willing to stay back and face the mess?

Owukpa in 2021 witnessed unprecedented poverty and famine. If you are a responsible Owukpa son and daughter, you will know this by the number of requests you get each day due to the current hardship. This can be traced to the absence of leadership. Who will invest in a community without a leader? Who will pay tax to an empty throne?

Ultimately, local security and intelligence are constantly threatened when a community is faced with this kind of leadership struggle. Criminals capitalize on this gap to launch attacks on the community. This is what Owukpa is currently experiencing.

No doubt, the perpetrators are not strangers. They live among us; they are not Fulani herdsmen. Without justification, they may be frustrated youths. The leadership may have failed them too. After all, if the elders are not sincere in leadership issues, manipulating history and antecedents selfishly, the subjects, especially the youths who look up to them will find solace in crime. ( No justification)

Those making the stool a subject of controversy should at this point think of the repercussion. Because we all hailed from the same community, when it rains in Owukpa, it exempts no roof. Now, the era of kidnapping has come and we are almost on the verge of losing our Owukpa. It’s now getting to the point where even those fighting for the stool will abandon it for the fear of being kidnapped.

What they have been fighting to grab has completely slipped away. The stool we shamed over time is now shaming us. “Ita chee…”