I woke up to the tears and mourning emanating from Ibeno. Ibeno is my mother’s homeland. A beautiful beach resort with the best fish u can get anywhere. The people are very engaging and nice, with a close resemblance to Ghanaians and a penchant for thier hot drink .
It is made up of three villages – Upenekan where Alice my sister in law comes from, Iwoachak where my mother comes from and one other that I cannot remember.
The villages are beautiful and serene and the beaches that adorn them are a must attraction to people of the South East and as far away as the Cameroons.
Alice has been very worried. From far away Qatar she has been inundating me with reports. Reports of carnage, blood and murder. I have in turn watched a channels TV report where the youths of Ibeno have risen up to vow to defend their land.
It is Eket people again o and this time the Ona people have joined the fray. I grew up hearing of these attacks even as a child. The neighbouring people would form a blockade and from there attack and my mother’s people would have no other recourse but to jump into the sea in their boats for survival.
It is oil o. Ibeno is oil rich and this has been the envy and bone of contention for centuries. Mobil, the giant Oil conglomerate berth there and from there begin to push into the high seas for offshore drilling.
They mostly put up their staff in the neighbouring Eket which as a result grew into a hustling city with hotels and other infrastructure while Ibeno bore the brunt of the drilling with gas flaring and it’s attendant environmental degradation.
As if that was not enough, the human capital requirements of the huge Mobil as at that time were opaquely at a disadvantage of my mother people, as you would see an Akin or a Segun in Ibeno heading the admin team a none expert position that any fool can fill up.
Today and all of a sudden in the twilight days of Emmanuel Udom, the clownish former Governor of Akwa Ibom, a remapping initiative was concocted. I do not have the details but what I hear is that the exercise will take some of Ibeno land and add to Eket and maybe Ona his local government thereby immediately granting them the profile of a host community.
The simple reason behind this travesty is because of the emergence of Seplat into QIT the mobil base in Upenekan. Mobil as we all knw is divesting and is being replaced by Seplat and the people of Eket and Ona to perfectly position themselves and led by their dimwitted son, have decided to remap.
Let me explain it better. It’s like finding oil in Shomolu all of a sudden and the next monday, the people of yaba, a neighbouring community now pushes for a remapping to extend their borders into Shomolu taking Fola Agoro, Morocco and Akpata so that they will partake of the benefits.
If this was achieved by a plebiscite or any form of democratic push, someone will understand but by Fiat from a Governor who at best had a very lacklustre tenure just like that is the annoying thing here.
The present Governor whose administration is an offshoot of the annoying one is now in a fix as to how to react. It’s admonishment for peace have gone largely ignored and he doesn’t seem to be in a good position to do anything constructive on the matter
This is why I am calling on President Tinubu, his Chiefs of Army and Navy, his IG of Police to step in and stop this violence and carnage on the land.
Let me state very clearly the international security implications of doing nothing. Ibeno is very close to Cameroon and we all know how ambitious those ones can be. Gendermes in the past have been sighted along the peninsula just lurking around and as such any restiveness can be taken advantage off.
If Governor Eno continues to be this ‘helpless’ then Federal troops must as a matter of necessity move in.
We can not accept the violence, we cannot accept the carnage and we can not accept the battering of a peaceful, gin loving people by greedy neighbouring marauders with eyes on the resources and nothing else.
This must stop.
Thank you.
Duke of Shomolu
