Senator Ita-Giwa alleges threat to life over Bakassi

Former Senator Florence Ita-Giwa has alleged threat to her life by Governor Ben Ayade of Cross River State and his cohorts over her involvement in uncovering a dastardly plot of diverting relief materials she sourced from the National Refugee Commission for victims of a fire outbreak in Dayspring Island Bakassi by some Cross River State officials.

Ita-Giwa who addressed a press conference in Lagos said there has been a sustained and coordinated campaign to demonize her person and make rubbish of all her efforts towards alleviating the plight of her people of Bakassi.

“I would like the public to know that Gov. Ben Ayade, a man whose election I supported has been sending menacing text messages to me, warning me of the consequences of involving the Nigerian Media and Nigeria Police in the uncovering of the diversion of the relief materials by his government officials.”

“As we speak, Cross River State is very unsafe, with assassinations and kidnapping becoming the order of the day. Under this cloud of general insecurity, nothing must happen to me. Gov. Ayade and his gang of merry men should be told that, they will be held responsible should I come to any misfortune. This self serving campaign of calumny against me instigated by the state government is capable of inciting ethnic tensions, which may in turn lead to the shedding of blood, a prospect I dread greatly.”, Ita-Giwa told Lagos journalist at Protea Hotel,  Ikeja.

According to the Senator, reports are that some youths have been induced to carry out so called protest rallies against me in Ikang, the new location of the Bakassi Local Government.”The so called protests are a follow up to a spurious press release issued by an equally flippant entity that calls itself Coalition of Bakassi indigenes. Their statement contained a litany of lies, calculated to demean and defame my person.”

She however observed that the whole issue is politically motivated and is being coordinated from the highest echelon of power in the state following her decamping to APC.

Defending herself on what she described as frivolous allegations against her, Ita-Giwa stated that silly allegation that I accused Governor Ben Ayade of colluding with some political office holders to divert relief materials thereby bringing him to disrepute, gives them away as a bunch of hypocritical sycophants. At no time did I mention Governor Ayade’s name as a culprit in the crime I helped expose.”

“The accusation that I set up a phony resettlement camp in Akpabuyo with the aim of fraudulently mobilizing relief materials which are then shared by me and others to be resold in the black market for pecuniary gain is laughable to the extreme. The people in the said camp are Northern Bakassi indigenes who were persecuted by Cameroonian Gendarmes, and fled on their own to Akpabuyo. I acknowledge that I have had cause to distribute relief materials sourced from my personal funds as well as mobilized through my personal goodwill to them from time to time. As long as there are hurting Bakassi indigenes anywhere, I make no apologies for trying to ameliorate their plight.”

“They claim that I misled government to recognize a nonexistent Dayspring Island as part of Bakassi, while they contradicted themselves by saying Dayspring is a marshy fishing settlement in Calabar South Council that has been a fishing port of the Ikang community suggests that they may be schizophrenic.”

“In the first instance, Dayspring was identified by the then Resident Electoral Commissioner of INEC as a viable platform for the registration of Bakassi indigenes to become bona fide voters in national and state elections after our ancestral territory was ceded to Cameroon. I simply funded the construction of a town hall there to accommodate the voter registration that took place there.”

“One of my traducers who are now a commissioner in the state got elected to the State House of Assembly from there and even won an election tribunal challenge premised on the so called illegality of the voter registration at Dayspring.”

Moreover, if my accusers say Dayspring is an Ikang fishing port and Ikang is the location of the new Bakassi L.G.A, then it stands to reason that Dayspring is a part of Bakassi L.G.A.

“The allegation that there was never a fire outbreak and that the story was manufactured to get relief materials from NEMA is an indictment against the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA), The National Refugees Commission and The Nigerian Media who all accompanied me on the verification visit to the site of the fire incident. It must be noted at this point that evidence of the perfidy of state institutions in Cross River State began to unfold during that exercise as the Director General of SEMA who accompanied me, tried to convince me to grease the palms of the team from the refugees commission so that they will exaggerate the extent of damage in order to get more relief materials.”

“It must be noted that the report of the fire outbreak was brought to my notice by one Udeme Effiong Okon, a former Bakassi L.G.A Vice Chairman. It is therefore ironic that we recovered large quantities of the relief materials in his private residence at Calabar which has been evacuated by the police and is now held as exhibits of a crime.”

“The final allegation that the Director General of the SEMA handed the relief materials over to the Head of the Bakassi LGA who was under my instruction to distribute the relief materials to persons penciled down by me is ludicrous. To start with, I have no relationship whatsoever with the said Bakassi LGA official. Secondly, I offered SEMA One Million Naira to charter vessels to convey the materials to the location of the fire. I should have suspected something fishy as the DG of SEMA stalled on taking up my offer. Apparently, it was more profitable for him and some officials of the state government to divert the relief materials.”

 

Modestus Anaesoronye