1. Misframing the Ozalla farm estate proposal
Mr Nnaji Jekwu Onovo is a seasoned politician and essayist. He is also a media operative who served as a media aide to the former Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology, Chief Uche Geoffrey Nnaji, until the minister’s appointment was brought to an abrupt end under circumstances that are too well known to require rehashing. Following his exit from office, Chief Nnaji’s political fortunes took a different trajectory. Having been displaced within APC by Governor Peter Mbah, he subsequently emerged as a factional candidate of PDP, the governor’s former political party. Such political realignments, including politicians finding themselves in one another’s former parties, are hardly unusual in Nigeria’s fluid political landscape. They do not, however, diminish the obligation of public commentators to approach sensitive community issues with fairness, objectivity and fidelity to the facts.
In his article, “UNTH Host Community Teetering on the Edge of Crisis” (https://thesun.ng/unth-host-community-teetering-on-the-edge-of-crisis/), Onovo deploys the full range of his experience in politics and public communication, combining engaging prose, rhetorical devices and adept political messaging. Unfortunately, what could have been a thoughtful intervention on an important community issue is instead marred by tendentious argument, selective presentation of facts, inflammatory language, dubious analogies, and misleading claims.
His opinion piece raises important questions about land ownership, government acquisition, community consultation and due process. Its central premise is that the Ozalla Development Union (ODU), or its President General, unilaterally offered family ancestral lands to the Enugu State Government without the consent of the owners. Although he acknowledges in passing that the land was proposed “for agricultural purposes”, he conspicuously omits the most important fact, namely that the proposal was part of the Enugu State Government’s Farm Estate Programme, a point to which I shall return.
By withholding this vital information and reducing the proposal to an alleged attempt to “hand over” ancestral land, his write-up shifts the narrative and lures readers into viewing a development initiative solely through the lens of “land dispossession”, “land grabbing” and “impending conflict”.
However, the very address of the ODU President General upon which he hinges his argument is explicit on the purpose of the land. “We convey the resolution of the Ozalla General Assembly of August 25, 2025, offering the Egu-Obodo/Njakwa axis in Obeagwu-Ozalla and Umuanee-Ozalla as a suitable site for the proposed Farm Estate,” the President General had stated.
While I do not hold a brief for the ODU President General, who is obviously capable of speaking for himself, I was present at the ODU General Assembly meeting on that date. I cannot recall seeing Onovo at any ODU General Assembly meeting in recent years. Before the resolution of August 25, 2025, I had personally briefed the General Assembly, in my capacity as a senior aide to the governor, at an earlier meeting where I explained the government’s intention regarding the Farm Estate Programme. I urged Ozalla to consider one of our distant forests, specifically mentioning the Egu-Obodo and Njakwa forests, for the project so that our community could be amongst the early beneficiaries.
Representatives of both Umuanee and Obeagwu villages, who are always seated under their respective canopies at every General Assembly meeting, like the rest of the villages, at no time expressed concern that the government intended to grab their lands. Yet Onovo, who admitted writing from Lagos, portrays the proposal as evidence of a sinister land-grabbing scheme, thereby betraying signs of either mischief or a disconnect from his own kinsmen and village people.
Onovo complained of a lack of consultation with the villages, yet he himself did not consult his kinsmen on the processes that led to the ODU resolution. Had he made enquiries back home, perhaps his article would have focused on interrogating whether the Farm Estate programme would benefit the community or whether adequate safeguards were made to prevent any future conversion of the land to a different use. Instead, he chose to attribute the proposal to a unilateral declaration by the President General, contrary to the facts surrounding the General Assembly’s resolution.
2. Has Onovo appointed himself Minister Udeh’s spokesman?
Perhaps the most curious aspect of Onovo’s article is his decision to assume the role of spokesman for the Honourable Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology, Dr Kingsley Udeh, SAN, a distinguished son of Umuanee-Ozalla who fortuitously replaced Onovo’s former principal. He confidently declares that the minister “is not aware of the meeting where the decision was reached” and therefore “not party to dispossessing his kinsmen of their lands.” He then adds: “The fact that such a decision was made without the knowledge of the minister and other illustrious sons of Umuanee and Obeagwu autonomous communities means that someone is being economical with the truth; and equally mischievous.”
On whose authority does Onovo make these categorical assertions regarding the minister’s alleged ignorance of the ODU resolution on the proposed Farm Estate in Ozalla? Has the minister stated anywhere that he was unaware of the resolution? Was Onovo authorised to speak on the minister’s behalf? If not, are these claims pointers to intentional mischief?
Even more contradictory is the author’s attempt to exonerate and simultaneously implicate Minister Udeh. While insisting that the minister knew nothing about the matter, he proceeds to suggest that the proposal could drive a wedge between the minister and the governor, or between the minister and his own kinsmen. This is a controversy entirely of the author’s own contrivance. Onovo is being clever by half, dragging the minister into a controversy of his own making while simultaneously pandering to him by denying his knowledge of the resolution on the proposed Farm Estate for Ozalla, thereby absolving him of any allegation that he connived with the governor to dispossess his own people of their ancestral lands. One must concede that Onovo posseses remarkable creative talent to weave such an intricate plot that amounts to what our people aptly describe as tii wofutee!
The irony becomes even more striking when one considers the minister’s immediate past role as Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice of Enugu State. As the state’s Chief Law Officer, he was a member of the State Executive Council that approved the Farm Estate programme across the 260 electoral wards in Enugu State. More importantly, every Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) executed between the Enugu State Government and beneficiary communities under the programme was not only drafted and scrutinized by his office but also bore his signature in his official capacity as the Attorney General.
It therefore defies logic to portray the minister as unaware of a policy whose legal framework he helped shape and institutionalise. Equally untenable is the suggestion that the Attorney General would knowingly lend legal imprimatur to any process that violated due process or unlawfully dispossessed citizens, including members of his own community, of their ancestral lands. Dr Udeh’s constitutional responsibility as Attorney General was precisely to ensure that every agreement complied with the law and adequately protected the interests of both the government and the host communities.
Further exposing the flaws in Onovo’s narrative is the fact that the President General did not make the declaration in secrecy or at a private meeting. The address was delivered publicly to the governor before an audience of about 600 Ozalla indigenes and stakeholders, including the Presidents General, community leaders, and prominent sons and daughters of Obeagwu and Umuanee autonomous communities.
If, as Onovo alleges, the President General had proposed to cede family ancestral lands without authority or consultation, one would reasonably have expected immediate objections from those present, particularly from the leaders and representatives of the very communities he claims were being dispossessed. Yet not a single objection was raised.
The matter did not end there. Following the event, the President General circulated the full text of his address on the official ODU Forum and other WhatsApp platforms of Ozalla people. The address has therefore been widely read within the community. Yet there has been no public protest, rebuttal or repudiation from Umuanee, Obeagwu or any other part of Ozalla disputing the General Assembly resolution or accusing the President General of misrepresenting the position of the community.
Onovo’s narrative of a conspiracy to dispossess families of their ancestral lands is therefore one manufactured after the fact rather than one arising organically from the community.
3. Farm Estates: Much more than agriculture
It is equally important to understand how the Enugu State Farm Estate Programme actually works. The initiative is not a land acquisition scheme designed to dispossess communities of their ancestral lands. Rather, it is a flagship, state-wide agricultural transformation programme under which one Farm Estate is being established in each of the 260 electoral wards in Enugu State.
Each Farm Estate has a space of 200 hectares and is structured as a cluster farm accommodating about 200 indigenous farmers from the beneficiary community, with each farmer allocated one hectare (20 plots) for commercial cultivation. Government supports this by providing the critical support that individual farmers usually cannot afford on their own, including land preparation through mechanisation; tractors and other farm equipment; improved seedlings and other farm inputs; extension and technical advisory services; irrigation, where applicable; warehouses and produce aggregation centres; access roads; perimeter fencing; and off-take arrangements that guarantee markets for farm produce, thereby minimising post harvest losses. That is the design of a Farm Estate.
The programme is therefore much more than a farming initiative. It is an integrated rural development programme designed to transform agriculture from subsistence to commercial production, stimulate agro-processing and value addition, create thousands of direct and indirect jobs, improve food security, increase rural incomes, and attract private investment into agriculture. Equally significant is its security dimension. By converting vast, dormant and ungoverned rural spaces into productive agricultural hubs, the initiative seeks to deny criminal elements and criminals posturing as cattle herders safe havens while creating new economic opportunities for young people.
Security is, in fact, the primary consideration for the people of Umuanee, Obeagwu and Ozalla at large resident at home in supporting the proposed Farm Estate on their lands. For years, villagers have been unable to access their fertile farmlands in the Egu Obodo and Njakwa forests because of the persistent menace of illegally armed Fulani herders who graze their cattle there. Onovo cannot plausibly claim to be a greater defender of the land rights of the people of Umuanee and Obeagwu than many of the rest of us. As he knows very well, _madu turikonoru n’Ozara._ We all share deep blood and marital ties across the various villages, and a danger faced by one village affects us all.
Where was Onovo when lorry-loads of Fulani herders invaded these forests in what appeared to be an attempt at permanent occupation? At the time, the President General of ODU was Chief Afam Ani who is from Etiti-Ozalla. He mobilised the entire community to resist the encroachment and, with the support of the State Government at the time and the security agencies, successfully drove the invaders away.
I also played my part, not only by participating in the resistance of Ozalla people under the leadership of ODU, but also by ensuring that the protest received widespread national media coverage, including front page lead reports in Vanguard and Daily Sun on October 25, 2016 (See for example this report, https://thesun.ng/enugu-5-villages-give-herdsmen-72-hours-to-vacate-domain/). Today, it is these same forests that have been proposed for productive agricultural use under the Farm Estate programme. The proposed asphalt roads to link every Farm Estates will, in addition, open up the corridor for housing development and attract further agro-industrial investment into the area. The Farm Estate Programme is therefore as much an economic and security intervention as it is an agricultural policy.
Against this backdrop, portraying the Farm Estate initiative as a clandestine plot to seize family lands fundamentally misrepresents both its objectives and its operational framework. If there are genuine concerns regarding the suitability of the proposed site or the adequacy of consultations within a particular community, those concerns deserve to be addressed through dialogue and consultation. They should not be deliberately misrepresented as evidence of organised land grabbing without any supporting facts.
4. False analogies and manufactured fears
The article’s sensational headline, “UNTH Host Community Teetering on the Edge of Crisis,” is itself indicative of the author’s overall mindset. By identifying Ozalla as the “UNTH host community,” Onovo sought to create the impression that the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH), or its relationship with the host community, is somehow strained and that the hospital management is implicated in the issues he raises. Yet the article has nothing whatsoever to do with UNTH. The subject oof his writeup is the offer of land made by ODU to the Enugu State Government for the proposed Farm Estate in the community. UNTH is neither the beneficiary of the proposed land nor a party to the issues under discussion. His invocation of the name of UNTH therefore serves no material purpose other than to lend the article greater drama and attract wider public attention by associating a well-known, but entirely unrelated, federal institution with a purported community crisis.
Equally contrived is Onovo’s invocation of the famous analogy involving President John F. Kennedy. Kennedy’s remarks concerned a profound constitutional question about whether a Catholic President would owe allegiance to the United States or to the Vatican, an issue that confronted him during the said 1960 presidential campaign. To transpose that historical context onto the Honourable Minister, Dr Kingsley Udeh, by suggesting that he faces a similar dilemma between loyalty to his community and loyalty to the governor cum benefactor is both unfounded and plainly mischievous. The minister has never suggested that he is torn between competing loyalties, nor do the facts contained in the President General’s address support such an inference. The analogy may make for dramatic writing, but it is entirely inappropriate in a matter as sensitive as community land.
The comparison with the Owo military land dispute is equally misplaced. The dispute between Owo communities and the Nigerian Army concerns compulsory acquisition by the Federal Government several decades ago and competing claims of ownership. The Ozalla Farm Estate proposal, by contrast, concerns a community resolution proposing a site for participation in a state-wide agricultural development programme. The two situations are historically, legally and factually a total mismatch.
Unable to establish the existence of any imminent crisis through verifiable facts, the author resorts to alarmist language that misrepresents the situation and risks creating unnecessary anxiety within the community. He accuses unnamed town union leaders of corruption, land grabbing, forgery and “primitive acquisition”, yet offers no evidence linking any of these allegations to ODU or its leadership. These are grave allegations and should never be made lightly.
If Onovo was genuinely searching for an analogous case study, he did not need to travel as far as Owo while overlooking a far more relevant example located only a few kilometres from Ozalla in Ndiuno Uwani-Akpugo and neighbouring Isienu-Amagunze, a controversy with which he is undoubtedly familiar.
In 2024, both communities protested what they described as an attempt by his principal, the then Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology, Chief Uche Geoffrey Nnaji, to acquire their ancestral lands under the guise of establishing a N40 billion biomass ethanol project. According to the communities, agents of the minister entered the vast expanse of land bordering the two communities and commenced clearing without the consent of the landowners or prior consultation with the host communities, the Nkanu East and Nkanu West local government councils, or the Enugu State Government.
As reported by the Independent newspaper on December 17, 2024, the move was fiercely resisted. The member representing Nkanu East State Constituency, Hon. Okey Mbah, whose community was directly affected, alleged that the land in question was the same land the minister had previously sought to grab under the pretext of establishing a privately owned rice factory.
“When that failed and after he became a minister, he returned to the land with a supposed Federal Government project, all in an effort to take over our people’s land,” he said, warning of an “impending danger and time bomb.” The legislator added: “According to the Land Use Act of 1978, all land is vested in the Governor to manage. How can a project of this scale, reportedly worth N40 billion, be sited without the State and Local Governments being informed? We expect proper engagement with various levels of government for a project of this nature. This project is anticipated to generate by-products, necessitating an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). Where is this report? These essential steps have not been taken.”
If Onovo was genuinely concerned about allegations of land grabbing, due process, unilateral action without community consultation and the prospect of an imminent crisis, this would have provided a far more appropriate analogy.
Indeed, Onovo’s repeated references to Ozalla “teetering on the edge of crisis”, families prepared to defend their lands “by any means possible”, and accusations that community leaders are “being economical with the truth” appear calculated to inflame passions and mobilise opposition against the government rather than encourage informed public discourse. Sensitive communal issues require careful and responsible commentary. Reckless rhetoric, unsupported by verifiable evidence, has the potential to create the very tensions the author claims to warn against.
