Come Let’s Rebuild Enwang Together: 2022 New Year Message from EDU
… Believing on the Redemptive Power of Forgiveness
My fellow compatriots, Clan Head, Village Chiefs, lords spiritual and temporal, Elders, women, students, youths, ladies and gentlemen of our native Enwang land, I bring you good tidings today as we all cross over into the year 2022.
The year 2021 records as an eventful and critical turning point in the life and history of both our people and our beloved Enwang Development Union, EDU.
In quick successions, we woke up on Tuesday, the 19th day of January, then on Thursday, the 21st of January and lastly on 24th February, 2021, to witness the stark horrors of our neighbours from Uko Nteghe Uda community and their hired mercenaries unleashing a mayhem of predetermined and well organised series of unprovoked attacks on Enwang.
At the end of these attacks, people were killed, houses were completely destroyed and properties and local businesses worth hundreds of millions of Naira were totally ruined. And all this barbarity because of an orchestrated disputation over an inconsequential parcel of farmland.
The Birth of Enwang Leaders of Thought
The trials and intense challenges that these attacks confronted us with rudely steered the hornet’s nest, causing a drastic paradigm shift in the collective consciousness of Enwang people. As if Frantz Omar Fanon had Enwang in mind when he asserted in his book, “The Wretched Of The Earth”.
Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it, various grades and generations of our people woke up from their slumbering inertia.
At the height of our collective humiliation and shame, where our people suddenly found themselves internally displaced, driven out of their ancestral homeland and forced to seek temporal shelters in Ebughu, Udesi, Udung Uko and Akanaobio Oron, at the critical point where the dark clouds of disillusionment and hopelessness overshadowed our people, the anguishing cries of our children and women and the innocent blood of our youths callously spilled on our land let loose a thunderous spark of vivifying light.
As in the case of _Sango_ in the Yoruba mythology or of Jupiter, the God of Thunder in the Greek and Eleusinian mysteries, the lightening rod of regeneration anchored in the blossoming rose that imbues the soul personality of Major General Isidore Edet [rtd].
And when he spoke, transmitting the message, it struck and resonated harmoniously with an archetypal chord; and lo, we each and collectively knew or intuited that Providence has ordered that it was time we all rose in unison to fulfill our destined mission for Enwang, the providential and/or cosmic mission of husbanding and inaugurating in this 21st century the Third Phase of the Enwang Renaissance. Thus came into being the Enwang Leaders Of Thought.
On discovering and patriotically accepting its ordained mission, the body of ELOT came “out of relative obscurity” to audaciously meet the latest of the most existential threat confronting our people and community with the one-pointed objective of triumphing over it.
Since it crystallized into a body in early February, 2021, ELOT has recorded a few significant milestones namely:
i] The Research & Documentation Team led by Chief Effiong Uquah produced the robust report that chronicled the attacks on the Enwang community and presented same to the Council of Òrò Traditional Rulers, COTR, the Akwa Ibom House of Assembly Committee on Security and Boundary Matters, the Akwa Ibom State Government, the National Assembly and other Federal Government agencies.
ii] ELOT organised a 150 Million Naira Enwang Victims’ Appeal Fund Launch on Saturday, 5th June, 2021. The sum of 24 Million Naira was realised from this exercise.
iii] In December, 2021, the 20 Million Naira approved for disbursement to the victims of the attacks was equitably shared to the 294 persons involved ranging from *10,000 to 320,000 Naira, depending on the degree of severity of the damage suffered.
iv] For the purpose of protecting our community and people from further attacks from our neighbours and to demonstrate how seriously we take our martial slogan: ‘Never Again’, ELOT took strategic steps to passionately appeal and was graciously blessed with the prompt stationing of a platoon of Quick Reaction Team in Enwang.
v] ELOT organised a 4-day event marking the epochal 50th Anniversary of the founding of Enwang Development Union, EDU, a celebration we couldn’t hold in 2020 due to a combination of factors such as the COVID-19 plague, the Uko Nteghe Uda attacks and, principally, because of the debilitating incohesion and intractable internal crisis that practically paralysed our creative energies and left us prostrate and vulnerable to all manners of external aggressions and pillaging.
Enwang Èlagha Èla
The mammoth crowd that graced the momentous celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of _Ngha EDU at the Enwang Town Hall on the 27th of December, 2021, was unprecedented in the annals of our history.
Never in the last thirty years of our history have we had or witnessed this sea of people thronging to the streets of Enwang playing, singing, dancing and jollificating and infusing the atmosphere with the beautiful fragrance of their uplifting joy and love.
All these were, indeed, the palpable and positive signs that an inner transformation was happening to the Enwang collective psyche; these were unmistakable indicators that a revival, a resurrection, a soulful reawakening of that redemptive primordial Èwang Spirit has chanced.
The outpouring of the redemptive Èwang Spirit unto our collective consciousness on the 27th of December, 2021, inaugurates the third phase of the Enwang rebirth.
Let no one be in doubt. Each and every one of us of this generation are the human tools and channels that will husband and berth the Third Phase Of The Enwang Renaissance or Rebirth in this 21st century.
Come And Let Us Rebuild Enwang Together
Humbled, but not in any way intimidated, by the enormity of the developmental challenges facing us, emboldened and encouraged by the undying resilience of our spirit, and trusting in your unflinching support, I humbly stand as your President-General on the broad shoulders and achievements of my predecessors and the illustrious founders of our beloved Union to respecfully appeal and solicit for your kind support as we commence the arduous task of taking our community and people to a higher economic, political, moral, social, educational and infrastructural level.
Below are some of the projects we shall be embarking on in the coming years and upon which we seek the moral and material assistance of all sons and daughters of Enwang from far and near to help accomplish for the collective good of Enwang:
a. Launch an HIV/AIDS Initiative to contain the scourge amongst our people.
b. Reintroduce/Actualize the tertiary education modified scholarship scheme as conceptualized by ELOT.
c. EDU working in tandem with the LGA Chairman to do some measure of town planning and name streets in Enwang town.
d. EDU corroborating with relevant FG agencies to rehabilitate the Enwang Beach Market and making it operational in 2022.
e. Reactivate, modernize and operationalise the Enwang Multipurpose Cooperative Society to help our local business men and women.
f. Facilitate the reopening of a commercial bank in Enwang.
g. Seek assistance from appropriate FG agencies to help stabilise areas affected by gully erosion in Eyofai and Eyoudombo.
h. Rehabilitation of Enwang Community Secondary school.
i. Rechannelling the energies of our youths into productive ventures by engaging them in vocational skills acquisition programs.
j. Corroborate with the oil companies to establish and adequately furnish an ICT educational centre in Enwang that will help to adequately prepare our O’level graduates for examinations into tertiary institutions.
Let Us Forgive Ourselves And Others
My beloved Enwang brethren, as we collectively embark on our new journey to reclaim and establish our community as a beacon of excellence and hope, I want to solemnly appeal to us all that we find in our hearts the will to forgive ourselves of the wrongs we may have knowingly or ignorantly committed against our best interests.
While we have taken concrete, practical and legitimate measures to ensure that Enwang is Never Again attacked by any of our neighbours, I want to also fervently appeal that we, the people of Enwang, find the abiding love in our heart and mind to forgive our brothers and sisters from Uko Nteghe Uda community.
I know it as an immutable spiritual law and strongly believe that the redemptive powers of a loving forgiveness shall open our people and community to new opportunities, abundance and priceless cosmic blessings to overflow. I challenge us to trust in the redemptive powers of forgiveness.
MAY GOD BLESS OUR NOBLE ENTERPRISE AND CROWN THE NEW JOURNEY OF THE ENWANG DEVELOPMENT UNION, EDU, WITH RESOUNDING SUCCESS.
BEING A NEW YEAR GOODWILL MESSAGE TO THE GOOD PEOPLE OF ENWANG FROM Engr Ovong Ita Awak, PRESIDENT-GENERAL OF ENWANG DEVELOPMENT UNION, EDU, ON 2ND JANUARY, 2022.
Engr Ovong Ita Awak
[Okete-Okete Òrò]
2nd January, 2022.
