I recalled with a rare smile a particular Sunday afternoon in the early 1990s when my mother served us with ukwa (Breadfruit) and dried fish. It was one of our best delicacies and one food me and my siblings enjoy eating while sitting on a big nylon mat which uncle Charles bought for my mother.
I was already seated on the mat for the delicacy when a cousin of mine entered our room on a routine Sunday visit. That cousin of mine obviously was about my age, but deficient to the point that he hardly had his bath. Now, on sighting that man, my mother gave him a spoon and asked him to eat with me.
Quietly, I left the food because I could not tolerate his dirtiness. I have seen situations where I was hungry, and I was invited to a meal and I turned down the invitation most times because I don’t feel secure or that I have serious doubts that the environment in which the food was served is unsuitable and or unhygienic.
Junpam, I cannot sit at the dining table or drinking bar with everybody. There are always exception(s).
A story was once told of a particular Enugwu-Agidi man resident in Maiduguri (Ojukwu Bom). He returned home during one of the seasons and was inundated with stories of a man who was said to be poisoning people. On that fateful day, Chief Ojukwu did not spare the man when he tried to join him and others at the drinking bar.
He quickly told him “I learnt you have been poisoning people, please take away your seat from here as we cannot sit with you”. That is courageous, right?
May I ask, are those well identified people who sell community lands illegally and without accounting for it not worse than that man who poison people? I should also think that people who have refused their kindred, clan, village and even the entire town to hold their usual peaceful meetings are worse than the man who poisoned people.
Are the same illegal land sellers, who take Enugwu-Agidi youths to foreign shrines for fraternal oath taking for their evil stricken agendas not worse than the man who gives poison?
These are the same people who take caterpillars to destroy people’s farm lands regardless of the cries of both the widows and the orphans. Are they NOT worse than the man who gives poison?
People who conspire against the traditional ruler of our town and the town authority to the point of beating a constitutionally installed chairman are worse than the man who gives poison.
The people who did not spare the tears of widows and sold off their ancestral lands. The same people who rejected the cries of a window and battered her son to death in her very presence are worse than the man who gives poison.
People who have no respect for God Almighty to the point that an accused person ran into a Church (House of God) shouting….. Jesus Christ! My hands are clean. Jesus! My hands are clean. Jesus! Defend my innocence… Still, they went into the Church, grabbed and forced him outside and beat him and killed him. Junpam, those people are worse than the man who gives poison.
People who until now are having meetings with cultists on how to invade Enugwu-Agidi on the 27th and 28th of December EBU General Assembly (GA) to silence everyone and to forcefully install Ebuka Onuorah, as the substantive President General of Enugwu-Agidi Brotherly Union (EBU). Is this not worse than the man who gives poison?
People who should make a U-turn from their questionable ways, having heard the truth from me, are busy planning on how to violently attack me. They are worse than the man who gives poison, according to the heroic and courageous words of Ojukwu Bom, “Such people must sit on another table to avoid them from poisoning innocent Ndi Enugwu-Agidi!”
It is a privilege to have friends who wouldn’t like to celebrate your failure. There are times when you must reject food, drink, money and favours to save your name and integrity.
Ifeanyi Ndulue
(Ibu Jesus).
IKOLO NEWS 