By Kelechi Ugo
Owerri, Imo State — Beneath the quiet farmlands and ancestral compounds of Obi Mbieri Autonomous Community, in Mbaitoli Local Government Area, lies a resource that should be lifting the community out of poverty: oil. Instead, community leaders allege that wealth is being quietly siphoned away — diverted through backroom arrangements struck in the vacuum left by the prolonged absence of the community’s traditional ruler, HRH Eze (Dr.) Josiah N. Osuji.
Tension has been mounting across Mbieri Clan following disagreements among stakeholders over oil exploration activities by Seplat Energy and the manner in which the multinational is engaging its host community. At the centre of the controversy is the reported discovery of crude oil deposits in Obi-Mbieri, and allegations that the company has failed to adequately recognise the community’s established traditional leadership structure. The dispute has exposed deep divisions among the seven communities that make up Mbieri Clan, with questions raised over land ownership, community representation, and who holds the legitimate authority to negotiate with the company.
Stakeholders insist their opposition is not to investment or development, but to any arrangement capable of depriving the rightful landowners and the wider community of the benefits of a natural resource discovered on their ancestral land. They have appealed to the Imo State Government, and to Governor Hope Uzodimma directly, to intervene before the disagreement escalates into a full-blown community crisis.
A Meeting That Exposed the Rift
The controversy came to a head at a meeting convened by the Supreme Council of Mbieri — comprising the seven traditional rulers of the clan — at the palace of HRH Eze C.A.C. Eronini of Awo-Mbieri on Friday, July 31, 2026. The meeting had been organised to give Seplat Energy representatives and the traditional leaders an opportunity to discuss the company’s activities in the area and agree a mutually acceptable framework for engagement.
It ended abruptly instead. A Seplat representative, Dr. Raymond Eze, told the gathering that the company had engaged HRH Eze Josiah N. Osuji in connection with its operations in Obi-Mbieri. The claim was met with immediate pushback. According to Chief Charles Opara (Dikenachuariri) and Chief Emeka Emerenini, Secretary of Ndi Eze Mbieri, the traditional rulers present were startled by the claim, since Eze Josiah N. Osuji, the substantive traditional ruler of Obi-Mbieri, has reportedly been away from the community for several years — by some accounts more than six — due to failing health. The rulers demanded that Seplat produce the man it claimed to have met, and asked the company’s representatives to return only after the identity and status of that individual had been properly established.
Reached by telephone afterward, Dr. Raymond Eze of Seplat confirmed that the company had met someone at Eze Osuji’s palace, but declined to clarify whether that person was in fact the traditional ruler himself. The non-answer has only intensified community demands for transparency over exactly who has been engaging with Seplat on Obi-Mbieri’s behalf.
A Structure Bypassed
Under Obi Mbieri’s constitution and customary law, the Traditional Prime Minister is vested with authority to act in the traditional ruler’s absence — a role designed precisely to prevent gaps in governance and to shield the community’s interests, including its natural resources, from exploitation while the substantive ruler is unavailable. “The chain of command exists for a reason,” said a representative of the traditional institution. “It is not ceremonial. It exists to make sure that when the substantive ruler cannot act, someone accountable to the community — not to private interests — is making decisions on the community’s behalf.”
Chief JAH Osuji, village head of Umuduruonugbo, where the alleged oil deposit is located, accused certain individuals of exploiting the leadership vacuum to sideline the Traditional Prime Minister and other recognised structures of the community. He alleged that oil and gas operators, including Seplat, had been granted access to community land and facilities without adequate consultation with the traditional leadership. The Traditional Prime Minister’s office, he said, exists precisely to protect the community’s interests whenever the traditional ruler cannot act — and bypassing it risks undermining the community’s ability to negotiate fairly over land, compensation, environmental concerns, and other matters tied to oil exploration.
The community’s President-General, Chief Samuel Oparaugo, went further, alleging that elements close to the traditional ruler’s household have taken it upon themselves to restructure community leadership — including creating or reorganising villages within Obi-Mbieri — without proper customary process, during a period when the traditional ruler has been unable to act. He said this had complicated the community’s internal administration, and that the oil company may have relied on information supplied by individuals whose authority to speak for Obi-Mbieri is itself in question. He urged Seplat Energy to instead engage the recognised traditional institution and consult the Traditional Prime Minister of Mbieri, Chief (Prof.) Kyrian Chinedu Ndikom, alongside other legitimate community bodies.
Approached for comment, Chief (Prof.) Ndikom declined a full interview but offered a brief remark: “Evil endures because too many people stay quiet. Justice means nothing if only the wealthy can afford it.”
Resources at Stake
Community elders point to a familiar and troubling pattern across the Niger Delta and its surrounding regions, where unclear or compromised local governance has repeatedly cost host communities — from stalled compensation negotiations to environmental and infrastructure decisions made with little community input. Obi Mbieri, they warn, now risks following the same path. “When there is no clear, respected authority on the ground, outside companies fill that gap however is most convenient for them — not necessarily however is most fair to the community,” one community source said.
Calls for Accountability
Obi-Mbieri has formally petitioned Seplat Energy, seeking recognition of the Traditional Prime Minister’s rightful authority and an inquiry into how resource-related decisions have been made during the traditional ruler’s absence. Community representatives — including Chief Charles Opara of Achi Mbieri and the Council of Mbieri Traditional Rulers — are demanding that Seplat and other operators publicly disclose the nature of their engagement with the community: who authorised the company’s activities, what consultations took place before personnel and equipment were mobilised onto community land, what agreements have been reached, and which traditional or community institutions were actually consulted.
Community representatives have renewed their call for Governor Hope Uzodimma and relevant state agencies in charge of the Traditional Institution and Community Policing to establish the facts around the alleged discovery, the status of exploration activities, and the appropriate community representatives with whom Seplat should be engaging — and to facilitate transparent dialogue involving the traditional rulers in Mbieri, landowners, community leadership, and the company. Stakeholders say such intervention is necessary to prevent the dispute from hardening into the kind of prolonged, corrosive conflict that has characterised relations between some oil-producing communities and energy companies elsewhere in the Niger Delta.
For many residents, the dispute is no longer simply about the presence of an oil company in their community. It is increasingly about who has the authority to speak for the people, who owns the land on which the resource sits, and how the economic benefits of any eventual exploitation will be shared. “The people of Obi-Mbieri are not opposed to development,” one community elder said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We are opposed to development that happens to us rather than with us, and to wealth that leaves our land without our community ever seeing where it goes.”
As the petition moves through Imo State Government channels, stakeholders are urging all parties to avoid actions that could further polarise the seven communities of Mbieri, calling instead for dialogue, transparency, and strict adherence to the law and recognised customary procedure — so that the discovery of natural resources becomes an occasion for development, rather than a source of division.
Residents say they are watching closely, and asking a question that has gone unanswered for too long: whose oil is it, who has the legitimate authority to speak for the landowners, and how will the people of Obi-Mbieri benefit from the natural wealth beneath their soil?
