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By Aniekan Aniekan, Calabar
Governor Bassey Otu’s move to reclaim Water Board land has triggered a confrontation with powerful figures, exposing fault lines in Cross River’s politics of land, patronage and control.
This is no longer about hectares. It is about who runs Cross River: the government elected to protect public assets, or the “big men” who have long treated them as private property.
The Water Board land row is now the clearest test of Governor Otu’s authority since taking office.
During the heyday of the Governor Ben Ayade administration, safe public water supply became a major challenge. The Cross River State Water Board Limited, despite being a beneficiary of multi million dollar World Bank support years ago, failed to live up to its mandate of providing clean and accessible water to residents across Calabar and the state.
Prior to the Ayade administration, the agency provided clean, reticulated water across the Calabar Metropolis.
Conceived under military administrations, the Water Board became a model for public water supply in the country, once formally recognised by the African Development Bank as one of its most successful assisted water projects on the continent. Pipes were laid across Calabar, outstations were built in several local government areas, and pipe borne water was one of the tangible dividends of democracy.
Most houses within the metropolis were connected to water pipes from the board, which supplied clean and well treated water for consumption by residents. The incidence of water scarcity within the Calabar Metropolis and some local government areas in the state was unheard of, and the indiscriminate drilling of boreholes was significantly curtailed.
However, maintenance of the extensive water supply network in the state lost priority over the years. Supply dried up from taps across the state. People no longer woke up to reticulated water at home. Despite being surrounded by water, pipe borne water became a luxury. That decline set the stage for the Water Board’s fall.
Its Calabar headquarters, located along Marian Road in the heart of the municipality, sits on a large expanse of land that appears undeveloped. Despite this outward impression, the land sits directly above very large raw water pipes, some 900 millimetres in diameter, carrying water from the intake at a velocity of 450 cubic metres per hour.
With the agency inactive and the land prime, the eyes of the elite turned to the property. For reasons that remain unclear, the government of the day partitioned the land and sold or allocated it to aides, associates and other elites who wanted to build palatial homes in the area. Numerous aides of past governments and the present administration acquired plots and converted the Water Board land into choice estates. The estate now has some of the most grandiose housing projects in Calabar, and senior government officials, past and present, own buildings there.
The Otu administration says restoring water requires accessing those pipes, and that can only happen by demolishing properties built on the pipeline corridors. Officials say the exercise is tied to the second Urban Water Reform Project, a World Bank backed scheme under which counterpart funding has reportedly been sitting unused for more than two years because the old pipes cannot be reached without excavation.
One of the property owners is Alphonsus Eba, a former APC state chairman and now PDP deputy governorship candidate for 2027. The Cross River State Planning and Development Control Taskforce recently pasted a demolition notice, referenced CRS/PDCT/043, on the gate of his residence in the Water Board Estate, warning that demolition would commence on or after 6 July 2026 and that all work on the site must stop immediately.
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Eba has alleged a witch hunt, describing the action as political and aimed at punishing him for joining the opposition. He noted that the building has stood, completed and occupied, for more than four years without any complaint from any government agency, and questioned why the issue was being raised only now. He insisted the Water Board Estate is home to several serving and former political office holders, including prominent members of the ruling APC, and argued that any enforcement exercise should apply fairly to every affected property rather than singling him out.
Defiant, he vowed that nothing, not even the loss of his house, would stop him from contesting the 2027 election.
The PDP has thrown its weight behind him, insisting any demolition must be comprehensive. State Secretary Joe Bisong alleged political vendetta, saying the party could tolerate the underdevelopment of the Water Board over the years but not what he called selective injustice. He noted that Eba got the land while serving as APC chairman, yet the house is only being marked for demolition after his defection to the PDP.
Calabar South PDP Chapter Chairman, Hon. Felix Offiong, accused the government of selective enforcement, listing serving APC officials, former and serving lawmakers, and executive council members who also own property in the same area. He argued that if the Water Board must serve its original purpose, then every affected property must go, not just those belonging to the opposition.
The PDP’s governorship candidate, Arthur Jarvis Archibong, has gone further, alleging that the demolition notice served on his running mate forms part of a broader clampdown on the opposition. He has separately accused the state government of deploying tax authorities to intimidate him through his privately owned university, describing a tax audit into the institution as insulting given that its obligations were fully up to date. He warned that he expected to be targeted next.
Special Adviser on General Duties, Ekpenyong Akiba, said the exercise is about restoring water supply and cuts across political lines. He explained that the Water Board facility was originally built solely for water production, with large underground pipes running beneath it, and that residential structures, including staff quarters, were only added later. Wherever pipes run beneath a house, he said, the government is entitled to demolish it so that residents can again have access to potable water. He added that the exercise is not limited to Eba, noting that houses belonging to a serving commissioner, a special adviser, former permanent secretaries, retirees and other government structures are also marked.
According to reports from Calabar, even a property linked to Deputy Governor Peter Odey sits within the same estate, and officials say a full map and development plan will guide the final list before any demolition proceeds.
Commissioner for Information, Erasmus Ekpang, has echoed that position, telling reporters that the exercise affects roughly 39 structures found to have been erected directly within the pipeline right of way, and that a committee will determine whether affected owners are compensated or relocated.
To back the claim of a broader clean up, the government formally published a Notice of Revocation dated 16 June 2026, signed by Lands Commissioner Dr Francis Ekpenyong. It revoked allocations for 91 persons in the Digital Layout, Water Board Environs, citing outstanding indebtedness for allocation fees and ground rents, as well as unauthorised development on pipeline corridors that obstruct critical infrastructure and pose risks to water supply and public safety. The notice stated that all rights and privileges to the affected plots are withdrawn with immediate effect.
For now, both sides have drawn their lines. The PDP says this is revenge. The government says this is recovery. The administrative reality is now clear; dozens of structures marked, a revocation list running into the nineties, a reference number on a gate in the Water Board Estate, and a commissioner’s signature behind it all.
The people of Cross River State have a simpler measure. If the bulldozers move across the estate without exception, it will be called reform. If they stop at Eba’s gate, it will be called politics.
Until water flows again from the Water Board pipes buried underneath palatial houses in its premises, this fight is about land and power. When the water returns, it will be about legacy.
