NUPRC, inter-agency committee geolocate 67 wells to CRS; AKS kicks
Ben Eguzozie
76 oil wells in western Bakassi Peninsula, with N600 million monthly 13 per cent derivation payout by the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC), has raised fresh spat between Cross River State and its neighbouring Akwa Ibom over which of them rightly owns the facility.
The oil wells were left out for Nigeria by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague in 2002, when it ceded the southern portion of Bakassi Peninsula to Cameroon Republic. Later, the Nigerian Supreme Court in 2012 awarded the entire oil wells to Akwa Ibom, when the latter filed a case to the apex court, asking it to determine the boundary between it (Akwa Ibom) and its sister state — Cross River.
The new swat over the oil wells ownership stemmed from an action by the Nigeria Upstream Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), in collaboration with the Inter-Agency Committee, comprising the Office of the Surveyor General of the Federation (OSGF), and National Boundary Commission (NBC) to geolocate 67 of the 76 oil wells to Cross River in May 2024, leaving Akwa Ibom with only nine.
Earlier in March 2024, Governor Bassey Otu brought a complaint, intimating the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) to the fact that several oil wells in OMLs 114 and 123 oilfields were actually within Cross River State’s maritime boundary; and for which the state derived no revenue.
According to Erasmus Ekpang, Cross River’s commissioner of information, the committee was constituted with the Surveyors-General of Abia, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Cross River and other oil producing states, as observers, to determine the veracity of Cross River’s claim. The committee (comprising OSGF, NUPRC, NBC, OSGFs of Abia, Anambra, CRS, and AKS, with OSGFs of other oil producing states) carried out its mandate by plotting the Cross River’s maritime boundary using Nigeria’s Administrative Map 11th edition, as well as the 2004 well dichotomy study map, and thereafter geolocated the oil wells found therein, with 67 of them found to be within the state’s maritime boundary.
Since then, Akwa Ibom, which initially controlled the entire 76 oil wells, receiving some N600 million monthly as 13% oil derivation payout from FAAC, has kicked against the move — hitting at its sister state of orchestrating the “oil wells robbery”. The oil-rich state, which also picks the largest FAAC income, due to its vast oilfields, has embarked on rancorous war of words — using the media.
The state’s attorney-general and commissioner of justice, Uko Udom, on July 24 made scatting remarks at Cross River government. But in a swift reaction four days later (July 28), Ekpang, the latter’s information commissioner, described the former’s statement as “outright misrepresentations and falsehood”.
His reply dwelt on what he described as the state not willing to “join in litigating this matter in the Court of Public Opinion, just as our sister State desires in the light of her various publications on the subject matter. Nevertheless, this time, it is important to clarify the misinformation peddled by the Akwa Ibom State Government on this issue”.
He traced the genesis of the oil wells spat to August 2008, when the Nigeria-Cameroon Mixed Commission (NCMC) was about to work on mapping out the actual boundary line of the territories belonging to Nigeria and Cameroon over Bakassi and Lake Chad. Ekpang alluded that while the NCMC was yet to be afoot with its task, the NBC and RMAFC held a retreat in Kano in August 2008, and applied what they called the “Technical Option” as against the “Historic Title Option” earlier used in demarcating the boundary between Cross River and Akwa Ibom States; and awarded the 76 oil wells located in western Bakassi to Akwa Ibom.
The Cross River information commissioner further claimed that Akwa Ibom had in its petition to the NBC “prayed for the application of the Historic Title Option in the resolution of her boundary dispute with Rivers State as was the case with her boundary with Cross River State”.
By far, ownership tussle over Bakassi between Cross River and Akwa Ibom had been on since 1994. Both states haggled over the natural resources-rich peninsula at the period (1994-2000) Nigeria tussled with Republic of Cameroon over ownership of the oil-rich peninsula, with crude deposits in excess of 17 million bbl, according to Offshore Magazine. In 2019, former governor Ben Ayade approached the Nigerian al government asking for compensation to the state for all the oilfields in Bakassi Peninsula and other 76 oil wells appropriated from the state, due to the 2002 International Court of Justice (ICJ) and 2012 Nigerian Supreme Court judgements.
