By Nsan Ndoma-Neji, Calabar
The Cross River State House of Assembly has summoned agitators for the delisting of Bakassi Local Government Area of Cross River State from among the 774 local government areas in the country.
Some other agitators wanted the headquarters of the Bakassi Local Government Area to Abana community.
Speaker of the Cross River State House of Assembly, CRHA, Rt. Hon. Elvert Ayambem disclosed this while speaking at plenary session on Tuesday in Calabar.
Recall that some group of individuals had written a petition to the Federal Government clamouring for the scraping of the local government, despite the fact that there was an existing council chairman for Bakassi Local Government.
Angered by the development, the state House of Assembly threatened to issue arrest warrant should those summoned before the House to give explanation for their actions fail to honour the summon.
The lawmakers, who condemned the petition seeking Bakassi’s delisting from the 774 local government areas sent to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu by a group identified as the displaced indigenous people of Bakassi.
The agitators call for urgent relocation of Bakassi Local Government headquarters to Abana community
The petition, which was also copied to the Senate President, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the senator representing Cross River South senatorial district, was criticized by lawmakers for bypassing state authorities and failing to engage Governor Bassey Otu directly.
The speaker lambasted those seeking for relocation of the headquarters of Bakassi to the Republic of Cameroon.
He said “Those seeking for relocation of Bakassi headquarters to Abana have no interest of the state at heart or they have some affinity with the Cameroon.
“This House will certainly invite those individuals who wrote the petition, we must certainly invite them to come here and give us explanation on why they think Bakassi should be delisted from local governments of Cross River State.
“If need be we will take a decisive action by inviting them to explan why they wrote a petition to the Federal Government.
“There are two ways that are open for such decisions to be taken. It is either by plebiscite or by referendum. And so those people who believe that the headquarters of Bakassi should be in Abana, we are open to plebiscite and referendum so they say yes or no whether they want to belong to Nigeria or to belong to Cameroon.
“If you say the headquarters should be in Abana, it tells us you have affinity or you are seeking to belong to Cameroon.
“And then we will be left with no option but to possibly conduct plebiscite and referendum where you go there and state your originality or your origin where you decide to come from.”
