Onwubiko Decries Spate of Homicides in Igbo Land

By Chioma Ndife

A veteran journalist Mr Polycarp Onwubiko has decried what he describes as the increasing spate of domestic violence that leads to homicides in many communities in Igbo Land.

Onwubiko who was reacting to news reports about the clubbing to death of a woman by her family member in Awka, Anambra State, recalled that in the past, family crises used to be amicably settled by kindred at meetings, according to traditional stipulations on inheritance of property.

His words, ‘Sadly, in this supposed new age, corruption, godlessness and crass hypocritical posturing, have rendered kindred meetings useless.

The supposed elders in the kindred are bribed by a party with wealth and they take sides to the chagrin and exasperation of the other party with modest income or a civil servant with usual poor income.’

Onwubiko who contended that it had become rare to see God-fearing people at kindred meetings, cited a situation at a kindred meeting in a community in the state where the response to a petition from a party to a family crisis was dumped instead of being discussed by the meeting because of overwhelming evidence against a party that had been intimidating the other party.

‘Given this corruptive stand, you have a case of murderous escapade as a last resort to get justice,’ he said.

Onwubiko called for what he described a moral re-armament and Christian lifestyle, which, he said, had gone to bed to reinvent the prime position of truth at kindred meetings, village meetings and town union affairs.