For four years, a holocaust known as Effium communal war raged. The term, “communal war”, is euphemism for the extreme destruction that took place in the old Effium community between January 2021 and June 2024. This piece is unwilling to rekindle the terrific imagery of those years when the hearts of men espoused cannibalism and unleashed Armageddon on the old Effium. The war was fought for no good reason; and it yielded nothing good!

In 2024, Governor Francis Ogbonna Nwifuru, a man whom God will continue to bless and prosper, stepped up to end the war by courageously declaring and upholding the truth which everybody knew but avoided all along. Sanity returned and hostilities ended; but by then, old Effium had become one large graveyard of not only innumerable children, the physically-challenged, women, young and aged men, but also the cemetery of promising destinies, hopes and aspirations; as well as home for distraught orphans, damaged widows, injured youths and traumatized men and women who survived the war!

Words may not suffice to appreciate the life-saving intervention of unassuming Governor Francis Nwifuru in Effium, especially for the creation and mapping of five new autonomous communities (Alioma, Ejem, Ezekuna-Alioma, Ekerigwe and Effium) in 2024 to end the debacle of old Effium. In January 2024, the governor appointed persons deemed “independent” as coordinators of the two Development Centres in old Effium (Effium South DC and Effium DC) and charged them to conclude the tracing and construction of boundary roads for the new communities in three months.

However, since January 2024, hours have stretched from days into years without the conclusion of the boundary road projects. While the so-called ‘independent’ coordinators of Effium South and Effium Development Centres have continued to give pedestrian excuses bordering on breakdown of equipment, resistance and security challenges, it is on record that the princely monthly fiscal allocations which each of them have received over the years have neither been reasonably deployed to the crucial boundary road project, nor invested in the welfare of thousands of displaced children, women, the injured, the physically-challenged and the aged in different parts of the old Effium. This large population of vulnerable people are trapped by post-war economic challenges in squalid improvised IDP camps!

Intelligence reports which security agencies will be unable to deny reveal that the delay in the execution of the boundary road project is not as a result of any resistance or security challenge as no such thing currently exists in the said area. The commitment of the leaders and stakeholders of the five new communities to Governor Nwifuru’s peace programme is unparalleled and can be attested to by state and security agencies. The issue of breakdown of equipment is also untenable given the gargantuan resources at the disposal of the DC coordinators.

Verifiable facts show that the delay in the execution of the community boundary road project is a deliberately-contrived tenure elongation ploy by the coordinators who are, in all ramifications, the greatest beneficiaries of the old Effium war. The logic is that since Governor Nwifuru premised the determination of their term of office on the conclusion of the boundary demarcation road project, they should not end their tenure by concluding the boundary road project. This, they could not deny in a February 26, 2026 meeting of the leaders of the new communities, the coordinators and the Ebonyi CP.

This ploy has undebatably worked in favour of the two coordinators; and to the detriment of internally-displaced persons and war refugees especially thousands of children whose destinies, hopes and aspirations are trapped in the informal IDP camps in different part of the old Effium. The three-month delivery timeline for the assignment has been stretched to three years. Yet, no form of hostility is going on in any part of Alioma, Alioma-Ezekuna, Effium, Ekerigwe and Ejem communities; and the fiscal resources at the disposal of the coordinators which are sufficient to doubly purchase all equipment necessary for the project remain unseen and unaccounted for.

The unfortunate thing about this delay is that it has offered criminals and non-state actors ungonverned spaces for their criminal activities. There are also reports of encroachment by undocumented foreigners into the ungoverned spaces.

More regrettable is the fact that for a cumulative period of six years beginning from January 2021, the vulnerable and economically-challenged population of old Effium, that is people of Alioma, Alioma-Ezekuna, Effium, Ejem, Ekerigwe, have lived without medicare inspite of the archetypal complexities found in typical tropical African rural settings like old Effium! For six years, no primary or secondary school has been in session in those communities. So, the children have been without formal education and medicare! For six years, the destinies of thousands of children have been stalled and abandoned to efflux into time; not by their own faults, but by the indiscretion of those who begot them.

In my recent visit to Alioma community, I encountered very innocent but frustrated children who yearned for the opportunity to see “good Governor Nwifuru” and pray him to reopen their schools. I promised to take their prayer to him. Hence, this teary piece.

A continuation of the confidential meeting with community leaders as initiated in February by Ebonyi CP can fast-track resettlement in the new communities of old Effium.

May God bless Ebonyi State!