…Kidnapping is rife in Bakassi
…Bakassi is a microcosm of what is wrong in Nigeria
Sir Effiom Nyong Effiom an indigene of Cross River who hails from Bakassi has bore his mind on the state of things in Cross River as a whole and Bakassi his home town in particular NEGROIDHAVEN has learnt.
Nyong who is the Country Director of Marie Stopes Nigeria, observed through a phone conversation on Monday that in every sense Bakassi is yet to be a beneficiary of what she had previously been promised.
While speaking to NEGROIDHAVEN exclusively during the week after his familiarisation meeting with the leaders of the PDP in Ward 7 in particular and some notable Bakassi political leaders in general, Sir Nyong decried the deplorable state of security of lives and property in his hometown. According to him, if the elements contained in international agreements and domestic policy statements made about Bakassi have been met, there would have been peace in Bakassi. Nyong who buried his biological father on October 2021, recounted how he lost him due to complications that arose from gruesome kidnapping attempts on him, and yet no arrests have been made. He cited leadership failure as the direct sequel to this unfortunate situation.
His words, “Frankly I think in every aspect Bakassi has not benefitted from what it was promised. There are lots of international agreement on Bakassi… and upholding what was said should be done for the peaceful resolution of the issue. Bakassi has been at the short end of the stick.
“Bakassi is highly unsafe right now. I buried my father last month. He was kidnapped by a group of people. He was a military man who had served this country for 35 years. My father was matcheted and not even one person was arrested. And it wasn’t even in the news.
“Bakassi is a forgotten place and I think the people have gotten the short end of the stick. We need to talk about the Bakassi you want to see. Whether you are from the upstream… It comes with leadership. It comes from telling us what we truly are. It comes from giving people what you say you will give them. There’s a huge challenge, and I think Bakassi is a microcosm of what is wrong in Nigeria. I don’t want to say that we don’t know the things that needs to be done. Truly we need to look at that local government. Leaders need to come together. What we are demanding for is right and we don’t just use it as a political springboard.
“Kidnapping is rife in Bakassi. People can’t go to their homes. I have a house that everytime I want to go there I have to go with mobile police. It is very embarrassing. How many of the leaders are living in that local government? What improvement has come to that local government in the last 6 years or so? We need to give Bakassi what is rightly theirs. We need people from that extraction to come out and speak and be heard. You know the Maslow theory of hierarchy of needs… People have started resorting to crime and very dubious behaviours because they need to survive. And when the system has failed you why do you care for the system? It is not by raising people to go and speak and then the inherent problem is not solved, and then return back to harming each other. It’s so bad that women in Bakassi go to sleep in church at night out of fear. I think the story of Bakassi should be told differently and people should know what’s happening. I have lost my father, I have lost everything because of the lack of governance in that area.”
Speaking about the just concluded Town-hall Meeting organised by a group disposed to the rotation of political power especially that of the office of governor to the southern senatorial district of the state, Sir Nyong said that he endorsed the call out of the principle of fairness, equity and the need to stick with the Calabar-Ogoja Accord until when a new of such agreement is drafted:
He said, “I was part of the Cross River South Coalition that made the call on Friday and it was interesting, one for me it was seeing people of the South coming together and talk about having leadership return to the South. I think a lot has been said about zoning, whether it’s right or constitutional or not. My take has been that democracy is defined by the people and as long as we know that it is not by the elite, not by a group of oligarchs. When the people have come together and say this is the pathway through which we want to bring in fairness and equity into our system, it’s not anybody’s right to start saying that’s undemocratic or that’s not right or there’s no meritocracy in that.
“What’s meritocracy in democracy? When we say that okay we are people of different geo-location and we want to see fairness. Not fairness because there’s money skewed in one part of the country or region than the other. Not fairness because there’s population density in one part of the country than the other. Fairness and equity because you are part of this state called Cross River, and you are entitled to also bring rulership into this Cross River, and for that we have agreed that we are going to rotate it this way until such a time when those people sit and draw an accord and say we have been able to bring in the level of equity that this accord is no longer necessary, let’s establish our new level of equity and fairness. Until such a time, we need to hold onto that accord.
“And I think that’s why I supported the Cross River South Coalition meeting chaired by Senator Bassey Ewa and Nkoyo Toyo. It’s a path of honour which I think we must uphold ourselves. We hope to see the leadership return back to South in the year 2023 and I really hope to see well meaning Cross Riverians that believe in equity and fairness, and believe that they can be part of the success, not on the part of those that just complain about everything.”
