OKUAMA: ANOTHER SAD CHRISTMAS

By Moses Darah
December 30, 2025

On Christmas Day, churches across Ewu rang with carols of peace and goodwill. Families gathered around tables, prayers were offered, and sermons spoke of love, hope, and freedom: the very essence of Christ’s birth.

Far away from the hymns and festivities, however, in a silent barracks cell in Port Harcourt, Prof. Arthur Ekpekpo and four other Okuama leaders sat on a cold concrete floor, staring at a faint light slipping through a crack in the wall. For the second Christmas in a row, they have been held without trial. Their only “crime” was being indigenes and leaders of Okuama; a community where the Nigerian Army alleged that sixteen of its men died during what was described as a peace-keeping mission, even though the community was never at war.

The courts had ordered the Army to produce the detainees on September 30. In Warri, the Okuama people thronged the courthouse, clinging to the hope that their leaders would be freed in time to celebrate Christmas with their families. But the Army kept them hidden, like a truth too dangerous to confront. Day after day, families came, praying their loved ones would at least be brought out in handcuffs; any sign at all to show they were still alive. Each day, they returned home with empty hands and heavier hearts.

While Nigerians exchanged gifts and goodwill messages, not a single official word was spoken about Prof. Ekpekpo and the other Okuama leaders spending Christmas behind bars without trial. The season of freedom and redemption passed quietly over their cell, exposing a bitter contradiction: in Nigeria, liberty is often celebrated in speeches, while injustice thrives in silence.

And so, as candles burned in churches and choirs sang of peace on earth, tears slipped down the faces of Prof. Ekpekpo and his fellow detainees; not for themselves alone, but for a country that still denies justice to its own, even on Christmas Day.