‘…Ikot Akpan Udo experience’ll be child’s play’
A sociopolitical organization in Ibibio land known as Ibibio Front, has warned the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) to desist forthwith from what it described as ‘expansionist drive’, noting that any further move shall be resisted proportionately.
The Ibibio Front, while responding to IYC’s earlier threat to invade Akwa Ibom State, subtly advised them to learn from their fate during clash with Ikot Akpan Udo in Ikot Abasi LGA of the state.
Read below the group’s text of Press Conference read by its Spokesperson, Nelson Utip:
TEXT OF THE PRESS CONFERENCE OF THE IBIBIO FRONT ADDRESSED ON 30 DECÉMBER 2024 IN RESPONSE TO IJAW YOUTH COUNCIL’S PRESS CONFERENCE OF 24 DECEMBER 2024 IN AN EXPANSIONIST DRIVE INTO IBIBIOLAND.
Gentlemen of the Press,
The Ibibio Front, a Pan-Ibibio Union, has watched with dismay the televised press conference credited to Ijaw Youth Council issued on 24/12/2024 which is viral on the social media and the text thereof reported in several national and local tabloids.
In the press conference, the hoodlums threatened to invade Akwa Ibom State should the Ibibio ancestral landowners on the coastline assert their right of ownership in their ancestral lands. The press conference also claimed, most annoyingly and provocatively, that Ijaw is the owner of the entire Akwa Ibom State oil-rich shoreline of about 100 kilometers.
The said press conference also cowardly seek to bar Akwa Ibom people from peaceful protest in Akwa Ibom State in pursuit of their inalienable right to their land.
We are aware of the Ijaw expansionist move in Akwa Ibom State and how they secretly met with Ekid (Eket) leaders in 2004 begging that these coastal Ibibios should accept Ijaw identity in furtherance of their push for the creation of Oil Rivers State for the Ijaws on the oil rich Niger Delta coastline including Akwa Ibom coastline but the Ekets rejected the idea. Having not succeed in making Ijaw out of Eket in furtherance of expansionist agenda, they now plan an attack.
We are aware of the proposal for the creation of Obolo State dated 7th September 2020 which is before the Senate, provocatively, the map of the proposed state covers the entire Ibibio coastline in Akwa Ibom State, annoying still is the fact that the proposal has incidentally and allegedly sponsored by a highly placed personality in Akwa Ibom State; the effrontery and temerity of the present aggression originate from that proposal.
We are aware that Ibeno and Eastern Obolo settlers in Ibibioland who were driven out of their ancestral land in the 18th Century are not interested in the Akwa Ibom project but have always wanted to rejoin their kinsmen outside Akwa Ibom State in an independent state. To achieve this, they form satanic alliances changing their ethnicity at random depending on their ulterior needs.
And since they have no geographical contiguity with their kindred within and outside Akwa Ibom State, they devise dubious means including fits of violence to annex Ibibioland by force of arms to attain such contiguity.
We are aware that there are serious clandestine moves by Ibeno settlers in Ibibioland in cahoots with external elements to annex the oil-rich Akwa Ibom coastal land to some other tribes outside Akwa Ibom State with the intent to, in future, have a coastal state thus relegating Akwa Ibom State into the hinterland as a landlocked, none littoral, none oil producing and non-economically viable state.
From the foregoing, we respond as follows:
I) Apart from the peaceful Ijaw people who are resident in Akwa Ibom State for commercial enterprises, there is no indigenous Ijaw Community in Akwa Ibom State.
(II) From Ikot Abasi River in the west to the Cross River in the east covering the coasts of Ikot Abasi, Mkpat Enin, ONNA, Eastern Obolo. Ibeno, Eket and Esit Eket Local Government Areas is the coastline of the Ibibioland. At the risk of over-emphasis, Eastern Obolo and Ibeno are refugee settler communities whom through our forebears’ benevolence, were granted fishing settlements to settle on the coast for which they paid land rent to their Ibibio landlords up to the 1940s.
(III) The Ibibio Front wishes to warn, that Ibeno and Eastern Obolo shall not expand an inch beyond the land granted or donated to them by our forebears. Henceforth, any attempt will be met with measure for measure and the impact will be disastrous for the aggressors.
IV) The Ibibio Front wishes to warn that should these ungrateful settlers be so unwise to invite mercenaries outside Akwa Ibom State to invade any part of Akwa Ibom State or drop any Ibibio blood in their expansionist drive they will cease to exist on the map of the world. And, this is not a threat but a resolution.
V) The Ibibio Front wishes to dare, and we hereby dare the Ijaw Youth Council or whatever they call themselves, if they are man enough, not to hide in an unknown destination to boast or issue threats, but to walk the talk by crossing the boundary into Akwa Ibom State on the invitation of Ibeno or any other settler, in pursuit of any mercenary duty in Akwa Ibom State and we shall demystify them. Their fate at Ikot Akpan Udo in Ikot Abasi last year shall be a child’s play. In fact they may wish to drop their bodies and come only in spirit because should they reach here with their bodies they will certainly not go back with it.
VI) In response to the criminals’ insulting threat to Eket and other coastal Ibibio people never again to conduct peaceful protest in their own ancestral land to press forward their inalienable rights, we hereby call on coastal Ibibios to call for a peaceful protest and total blockade of Eket-Ibeno road. We shall mobilize the entire Ibibio nation to join the protest. Miscreants cannot seek to make Akwa Ibom State a satellite state or their colony. The insult is too much and shall no longer be tolerated forthwith.
Signed:
Nelson Utip
Spokesperson
Ibibio Front
