UCCDA and the Reigners’ saga

In his definition of Law under the positive school of jurisprudence, John Austin States that Law is a positive enactment promulgated by the politically superior to be obeyed by the politically inferior for fear of sanction in case of any breach.

Under this definition of law only those who are inferior in the society are the ones to obey the law while those who are superior are the ones to make or promulgate the law and are not bound by any law thereby rendering the Theory of the Rule of Law where everyone is equal before the law useless.

Uyo Capital City Development Authority, (UCCDA) as an agency of government is woven around this idea of dichotomy between the superior citizens and inferior citizens of law inequality in its operation. Otherwise how would one describe a situation where UCCDA shamelessly intimated the whole world that they had issued four stop-work warnings to the  Reigners Cathedral church but the church refused and still went ahead to raise the building to where it finally collapsed and killed scores of innocent citizens of Nigeria.

This is the same UCCDA that parades dozens of wild-looking Police men with long guns and drug controlled touts with long machetes, long and heavy hammers whenever they are going round destroying poor people’s houses using bulldozer driven by one hungry-looking Friday called Mallam who today is a Schizophrenia patient always causing panic in his neighborhood in Obio Ofot where he lives.

This is the same UCCDA that went and destroyed a house owned by a blind man along Abak Road by Mbebeng U-Turn in between Ikot Oku Obo and Afaha Offot after they had issued all the documents to the blind man. Thank God today the same UCCDA that issued documents to the man to build and turned round to demolish the structure has been compelled by the court order to build the house for the blind and today UCCDA is building the structure for the blind man with tears.

The same UCCDA that did not have any equipment to pull down the Killer Reigners Church because the proprietor of the church, Mr. Akan Weeks is a superior citizen, suddenly had equipment to demolish a poor man’s house in Use Ikot Ebio and when the some neighours quarried their authority, they shot one of them, Joseph Ime at a close range, and sensing that Joseph is dead, they shot sporadically to scare people then ran away not knowing that the Eagle eye of Century Newsfront was beaming its search light on them continually. After three days, Joseph came back to life in a private hospital along Idoro Road and the case went to court. The case went to court where UCCDA signed undertaking and paid the medical bills of Joseph including fixing of many teeth that the bullet destroyed.

The same UCCDA who claimed they wrote to the governor to give them equipment in order to effect stop-work notice at Killer Reigners Church went to Obio Ofot and demanded twenty Thousand naira (N20,000) from a poor widow by name Unwana Esang in order to spare her house, but the widow went inside the house and started crying as she could not afford such money, they went inside the house, beat her up, stripped her naked and threw her naked and still demolished the house. The tears of that widow and her curses with bare breasts as they stripped her have caused much damage in UCCDA and much damage waiting for them.

Reigners Church episode is just one of the UCCDA’s many activities of big man-talk- to-big man. UCCDA did not have access to demolish Reigners Church situated at Uyo Village Road but had access to the inside villages of Obio Etoi, Afaha Nsit and interior part of Nung Nkpe to pull down houses that belong to paupers, palm wine tapers and widows or they part ways with N20,000.

In the words of Professor Awoonor, the Killer Reigners Church was nothing but a huge senseless cathedral of doom and UCCDA waited for it to graduate to a huge senseless cathedral of death. Now that the UCCDA has started to mark all buildings along the Uyo Village Road for demolition, where would they acquire equipment to pull them down? Truly, the laws are made by the superior to be obeyed by the inferior!