By Ismail M. Kabir
I just learnt from Tao FM this morning that a mad man went gaga yesterday in Adavi-eba, a community bordering Ihima town.
The lunatic was reported to have fetched a sharp axe and started chasing people around, mowing down two people and leaving them mortally wounded.
One of the victims is reported dead while the other is still hospitalised.
This raises the question of why our local government authorities have done little to tackle the free entry of lunatics into Ebira towns in recent times.
Several petitions have been written by concerned citizens in our community in attempts to draw the attention of constituted authorities to act decisively in curbing this anomaly but they mostly fell on deaf ears.
An Ebira avid writer and poet, Buhari Omolori once wrote a well researched article on the subject matter which was published by EbiraView in 2011.
The article berated the high rate of lunatics freely roaming our streets with some parading themselves around social functions at the detriment of our territorial integrity.
Buhari explained in the article the various entry points and mode of 'delivery' of the lunatics by unknown agents who transport the undesirable visitors from distant locations to Ebira communities, dropping them mostly at the wee hours of the night.
Revealing as it was, the well circulated article yielded little or no result as we have witnessed a sharp rise in the number of Onura (as they are popularly called in Ebira term) in and around our towns.
The unrestricted presence of these 'low' members of our society not only betrays the rich glory of Ebira people but also poses a great threat to the safety of our children and other unsuspecting members of the community as we have witnessed in Idoji Okene few years back when a youth was stabbed to death by a mentally derailed boy, the sad event that occurred some years back when a famous personality from Ahogede was pushed down by a lunatic from a moving motorbike on his wedding day, and he lost a leg to the accident and, the unfortunate scenario that took place in Adavi-eba of Adavi LGA yesterday.
As the constituted authorities have failed in their responsibility to curb the incessant access to mad people in Ebira land, civil society organizations within the community have a duty to effect sanity in this regard.
A stitch in time saves nine.
The number of mad men and women in Ebira land is alarming. And I can tell you that 70% of them are not Ebiras.
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