We didn’t call for delisting of Bakassi – Displaced natives

A group, the Indigenous Displaced People of Bakassi Communities, has said it never called for the delisting of the Bakassi local government area from Cross River state as widely reported in the media last week.

The leader of the group and immediate past Chairman of Bakassi local government council, Chief Iyadim Amboni Iyadim, in a chat with our reporter in Calabar, Friday, said those who fabricated the said report were “doing the bidding of their slave masters.”

Chief Iyadim challenged anybody “living or dead to produce such a document written by me or the group I represent and signed by us to the press as proof calling on the federal government to delist Bakassi from the 774 Councils in Nigeria.”

According to the former Bakassi LG chairman, his group had called for “coastal reclamation of Dayspring 1,2 and Qua Island which remains the unceded part of the old peninsula in order to restore our dignity and give us that political and traditional identity.”

His words: “Let us put here and now that we are not in any way antagonizing the administration of Hon. Effiong Okon as Chairman of Bakassi local government as widely speculated by our detractors nor that of His Excellency the Governor of Cross River State Apostle Prince Bassey Edet Otu.

“We were merely deploying constitutionally recognized approach to drive home the point of proper resettlement of displaced people of Bakassi as promised by the Federal government 17 years ago, hence a Save A Soul letter to the President and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, Federal Republic of Nigeria, His Excellency, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR.”

“Therefore, we can succinctly put forward to the entire world that we have not been given fair treatment as a people, when our God’s given land was ceded to the Republic of Cameroon without our consent well over 17 years after several Technical and Implementation Committees were set up to handle our peculiar problem.

“A burden to resettle the displaced people of Bakassi is too much for the State to shoulder at this time. It is also proof able, that we are all registered members of the ruling APC and had worked tirelessly to elect His Excellency as well other standard bearers of the party in the last general election, as men and women of conscience, we cannot for whatever reason or gain destroy that which we invested time, energy and resources to build,” he stated.