•HRH Eze David Nnawuihe Onu Egwunwoke
The Akwakuma/Uratta community in Owerri North council area of Imo has celebrated their cultural annual festival with the entire shops and markets temporarily closed.
The event held at the Akwakuma market square recorded a large number of dignitaries from within and outside the state among numerous cultural activities, reports Nigerian Tribune.
In his address at the festival, the Traditional ruler of Akwakuma/Uratta autonomous community, HRH Eze David Nnawuihe Onu Egwunwoke disclosed the Community’s resolve to embark on subsistence farming as a way to tackle possible hunger and starvation in the community
The monarch described the current food crisis facing Nigerians as another nightmare that the nation had to contend with for some years now.
He said: “A hungry man is an angry man and not placing food on the table for the children to eat is an invitation to all manner of vices”.
On insecurity, Eze Onu Egwunwoke regretted that insecurity has become a thorn in the flesh of the nation with disastrous consequences.
He affirmed that the community has since beefed up security in all nooks and crannies of the community with the installation of a well-equipped and fortified local government Vigilance Group that patrols everywhere for the protection of lives and properties
He said: “The various Neighborhood Associations have aligned themselves with our impregnable and formidable security architecture to ensure that criminal elements do not use our place as a rendezvous to plot and execute their nefarious activities”.
The Monarch said that the festival (Emume Akwakuma) is as old as the community dating back to history when ancestors in their intuition, and wisdom resolved to have an all-embracing annual gathering that helped to expand the frontier of development in the community.
He said that such events which according to him usher in the New Year for the community for new farming season also help eliminate obstacles identified as cogs in the wheel of its progress, as well as impose penalties on those found to have in one way or the other desecrated the land.
While he denied any fetish thing in the just concluded cultural festival, the Eze pointed out that before this time, there was no quarrel not fighting, or any form of confusion among people of the community.
He advised the youths of the community not to indulge in any form of criminal act in the absence of white-collar jobs.
He described unemployment as s cankerworm and a pandora box in the polity with chains of adverse multiplier effects.
