All may not have been heard about the ceding of Bakassi as the Cross River state government insisted that only referendum would decide the final status of the oil rich peninisular.
Governor Bassey Otu, in a chat with journalists in Calabar, noted that with the National Assembly yet to ratify the ceding, the Bakassi matter was far from over and therefore, he called on the international community and the Nigerian state to revisit it.
“We did not ask the federal government to hand over Bakassi and though in absolute sobriety, we have continued to say it without equivocation that nobody can declare a litoral judgment against a people when there is no referendum and the people did not subscribe to it.
“It is one of the points we have started fighting seriously and we have gone quite far in this fight. We call on the world to revisit this injustice done to a people as the voice of the Bakassi people, through a referendum, was ignored.
“The National Assembly has not ratified the Bakassi ceding, and as such all hands should be on deck to ensure this injustice is redressed,” he stated.
Throwing light on the N500 million federal government relief fund to Bakassi people, the governor said, “On the revenue approval to Bakassi, yes it is true, but since I came into office, that payment has not been done and we are looking at it as being a very serious issue.”
Recall that Nigeria lost Bakassi Peninsular to Cameroon through the judgment of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2002.
Discussion about this post