No Takeover

•The federal governments should engage the militants in Cross River State

Reports that militants under the aegis of Bakassi State Force (BSF) have set up a parallel administration in Bakassi and Akpabuyo Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Cross River State are troubling. For the past two years, elected officials have since deserted the secretariats of affected local councils.

The militants are even said to have prevented the authorities of both LGAs from generating internal revenues from residents and other persons doing any form of business in their residents, shops and local markets and now pay rents and levies to them which they call “protection money”.

They have also reportedly displaced civil and traditional authorities in the areas and are believed to be responsible for cases of kidnapping, armed robbery among other crimes, in the area, as well as in Calabar, the state capital.

Perhaps what is baffling is that the presence of policemen and even soldiers said to be stationed in these areas has not deterred the militants from resolving land and other disputes and dispensing jungle justice like flogging of alleged offenders and extorting fines in the form of goats, drinks and money from them. Reports allege that “there seems to be a working understanding between them and the militants”.

The Federal Government should look into whatever the grievances of the militants are. This is against the backdrop of their allegation that they want the government to “extend an olive branch to us by way of amnesty, rehabilitate our people and our land by ensuring proper settlement of the Bakassi people”. They also reportedly complained that Akwa Ibom and Cross River States are part of the Niger Delta, yet “we have been completely sidelined from the amnesty scheme and other government programmes aimed at the youths of the Niger Delta”.

The situation has not been helped either by the bombings of the nation’s key assets by the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) and the involvement of the Ijaw Youth Congress (IYC) who insisted that the solution to the crisis in the region is for government to address “the question of resource ownership and control in such a way that local communities would have equity stakes in resources produced in their environments”.

So, in a sense, could there be any genuine needs of the state that require Federal Government’s attention? To us, this is a more pragmatic way of dousing tension in the two local governments. We applaud Governor Ben Ayade who has been talking tough and had even promised to flush the militants out of his domain. According to him, “we are coming after them. We know all the militants who are now parading and taking full occupation of Bakassi. We would free the people of Bakassi.”

We think it is pertinent to go into the root of the militants’ rebellion. Could it be due to official neglect of the people over the years? If the government had an agreement with Cameroun to take care of the people by the ceding of Bakassi to Cameroun, then it should have honoured the agreement instead of abandoning the people to their own device.

Perhaps the militants see militancy as a way of drawing attention to themselves and their plight. While we would not support criminality under any guise, we urge the government to look at the plight of the affected people. The government should find out what the issues are and try to find solutions to them.

It is only after this that we would know whether the agitation of the militants is to draw the government’s attention to the issues they raised, or it is just the case of some band of criminals trying to make the areas insecure. We say this because Cross River State has remained a relatively calm state over the past years, and should remain so even now.