Date Published: 12/03/09

Dear Sir,

The Marginalization of Ette Ibibio Community

Eight villages in Ikot Abasi Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State make up Ette Ibibio oil bearing community. They could not bear (any longer) the neglect of their area by both the Akwa Ibom State and Federal Governments; they shouted from their remote distance.

Reading Daily Sun newspaper Wednesday November 11, 2009, page 9, they were full of fury at their Town Hall meeting held recently, describing the treatment they are getting from the governments as “cruel marginalization against the goose that lays the golden egg”. Lamenting further, the monarchs of the area through their leader Eteidung Nyong Etukafia (the Ette Clan Head), said that “after several years of oil exploitation, the community was still in a state of total neglect and their indigenes still living in abject poverty, lacking in social amenities such as in health, potable water, roads, electricity and educational”. Supporting this, another community leader, Honourable Godwin King, lamented that “Ette community produces oil, yet the people are still counted among the world’s poorest communities”.

Ette may not be the only community in this situation. One then tend to feel that it could be media hype the claim, particularly as reported in Daily Independent August 21, 2009, of 3,000 projects (including the unfounded donation of 17 Dialysis machines to UUTH) initiated and completed by the present administration in Akwa Ibom within two years of its existence.  Akwa Ibom government has also spent in two years N200billion on roads, yet an oil producing community like Ette could not benefit from such, so also from the free and compulsory education in the State; Ette people complains of lack of roads and educational facilities.

This may be one of the reasons people are suggesting that federal allocation based on derivation which are primarily for development of the appropriate communities are being misappropriated by the executives at the two levels of State and Local governments. For instance in the Niger Delta Standard newspaper 5/10/09, the Akwa Ibom LGs warned the State government to ensure that they got their own share of the State’s last Excess Crude Oil allocation of US$105million.

Udy Etop Akpabio

Umuahia Road

Ikot Ekpene, Akwa Ibom State