THISDAY

‘Bakassi People Will Not Vote in Resettleme­nt Camps’

- Bassey Inyang in Calabar

Apparently acting in line with role as the leader of the displaced people of Bakassi Peninsula, a former Adviser to the President on National Assembly Matters, Senator Florence Ita-Giwa, has declared that the people of the area do not intend to vote in resettleme­nt camps during the 2019 general elections.

Thousands of the displaced people of Bakassi have been kept in resettleme­nt camps in Akpabuyo, Cross River State, since 2008, after the territory was finally ceded to Cameroon.

Ita-Giwa said, instead, the Bakassi people intend to vote in Dayspring Island where the Independen­t National Electoral Commission (INEC) has a presence

Ita-Giwa said this in Bakassi while inaugurati­ng the secretaria­t of the All Progressiv­es Congress (APC) and the ward executive of the party in the area.

She said the demand of the displaced people of the area to vote in Dayspring Island derives from a recent Supreme Court judgment which has mandated the INEC to ensure the Bakassi people vote in Dayspring Island.

While addressing members of the APC at the event, Ita-Giwa said: “We are a peculiar local government. We are not like every local government in Nigeria. We are a local government with very profound problems, that up till now, how many years ago that we were ceded without a referendum, we are still homeless, still in refugee camps, having babies and dying in camps. Until now we have not been relocated to where we call our home. To where is conducive to our ways and style of living, and means of livelihood. Up until now, Nigeria has continued to trample on the people of Bakassi, and we are saying that enough is enough. We came to APC so we can help solidify APC and when we do that and the president wins election; the president would be able to resettle the Bakassi people very well.

“We are qualified to vote as Nigerians. We went to Dayspring on our own without the support of government, and got our voters’ cards to be able to vote as Nigerians. Even then, they still went to court to question the legality of that process and we thank God that INEC stood their grounds and won the case. Today Dayspring is an area where you are qualified to vote and be voted for. Under no circumstan­ce should people continue to refer to Bakassi in numbers.

We are not numbers. We have names. All the ten wards have names. We have identities.

“We have our land, Dayspring. Let them take us there. We don’t need resettleme­nt camps. We need to go to our natural place of abode so people have their traditiona­l, political and religious lives as the case may be. That is why we are here to make that case, which is that they should leave us out of your faction issue. We have issues that are more profound than political factions.”

Commenting on the internal affairs of the APC in the state, Ita-Giwa said the Bakassi chapter does not belong to any faction; hence Bakassi is a “no-go-area” for factionali­sm of the party in the state.

Ita-Giwa said the APC in Bakassi is a united front that is determined to help President Muhammadu Buhari return to office for a second term; so that he can help resettle the people once and for all in a place they can call their home.

“We also have to emphasize that Bakassi is not in any faction. In all the years of our doing elections in the party, we have never had parallel structures or factions.

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