The Woeful Use of Our Youths as Thugs to Disrupt Community Development at Ochuche Umuodu

This is an official account of the incident that occurred at the Ochuche Umuodu Community site in Ogbaru Local Government Area of Anambra State on the 13th May, 2015 @exactly 11:00a.m.

The vigilante group attached to the new site acquired by Princess Stella Oduah for the development of Ogbaru, as part of her campaign promises was on their normal daily routine of ensuring that construction works/operations are carried out as planned, but the youths will not let them carry out their work plan in peace.  These same Ochuche youths have severally visited the site making monetary demands, even on few occasions beating the workers and having also to seize their work tools, thereby disrupting their activities in the last one week.

At the instance of all these, there has been an open window and invitation to the so-called Ochuche Youths by the office of the developer,          the Senator-Elect Princess Stella Oduah, to listen to their needs and possibly reach out to them but they would not bulge. This continued in the past week till the incident of today. All these while, the situation had been properly managed by the site workers to avoid any form of fracas with the youths. However, on this very day the Ochuche Youths led by their leader, Ugochukwu Obaze, who also represents and works for Chief Dubem Obaze as a community youth leader and a known thug in the Ogbaru community visited the site in the company of Dozie Ifeacho, aka Piakata, who is as well the commander of the youths,  Chijioke Okwuma, the assistant commander, another notable member of the acclaimed youth group, Okechukwu Okwuchukwu aka Nwanmo and others who are all fully under the engagement of Chief Dubem Obaze as his community thugs whom he engages in carrying out his dirty jobs. They all came in today as is their usual practice to harass the workers on site, making unnecessary demands and carting away their work tools.

All efforts and plea by the workers and the vigilante group to make peace with them proved abortive and in no time the situation got out of hands as the youths tried all they could to overpower the vigilante on ground, with the workers and the contractors at the site seriously beaten and wounded, the Ochuche youths were in the tussle with the sole aim of making away with their guns, and in the heat of the struggle to save their arms, the trigger of one of the three men went off.
It is also good to note that the so-called Ochuche youths had always visited this site riding in Dubem Obaze and Chinwe Nwaebili's branded cars, posing as their thugs.

Why should our youths be exposed to such danger at their early days by the so called leaders and those that direct the affairs of our communities?
Why can't they be positively mentored rather than use them to practice thugery and lead them into drugs and weeds intake that end up leaving them as nonentities in the society?
The more reason why we should have a good change in our leadership structure that will care and impact on the youths by creating jobs for them and assisting our youths in enhancing and developing their God given skills and talents.

It is worthy to note that the same Chief Dubem Obaze and Chinwe Nwaebili hail from the same community where this kind of menace is being witnessed and recorded from the youths who they stood for as their leaders. Also, they were the same people in power who actually mentored these youths who have become so displaced and misguided in the same community today.

We therefore call on all peace loving Ogbahuans to openly condemn this act of thugery and violence being masterminded by political and community leaders by woefully endangering our youths. Let us rather engage them creatively by providing them with skills and manpower development programs.

Media Directorate

PSOCO