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From Aniekan Aniekan, Calabar
The Cross River State Businessmen’s Forum, has said that the littoral status of the state remains irreversible despite claims by the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio that Cross River State is landlocked.
Senator Akpabio had described Cross River as a non-littoral state during a recent event to mark the 39th Anniversary of Akwa Ibom state.
In a statement issued in Calabar and signed by its President, Chief Henry Onwe, the Forum described Akpabio’s claim as “geographically inaccurate.”
“As leaders of the organised private sector, we refuse to accept such claims from the nation’s Senate President who ought to speak based on facts and neutrality,” Onwe said.
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The forum listed four facts to support its position that Cross River remains a littoral state.
These include the Eastern Naval Command in Calabar, which it said couldn’t be based in a landlocked territory. He also identified the re-accreditation of the state as littoral by relevant federal agencies after geopolitical reviews.
Chief Onwe further asserted that the physical existence of the Cross River Estuary discharged into the Bight of Bonny in the Atlantic Ocean, with islands projecting into international waters. He emphasised that though the 2012 Supreme Court judgment only settled allocation of oil wells, it did not erase the state’s coastline.
The forum said current efforts by the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), and the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), involve GPS mapping to redress historical anomalies, adding that scientific work for the Bakassi Deep Seaport has identified oil wellheads within the state’s coastal boundaries. The Business Forum said it stands behind Gov. Bassey Otu in this struggle and called on all stakeholders, including the media to maintain neutrality and to rely on “physical geography as well as certified federal data.”
