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The immediate past
governor of Akwa Ibom State, Victor Attah, yesterday broke his long
silence over the recent judgment of the Supreme Court ordering that 86
controversial oil wells from the state be given to Rivers State,
blaming the incumbent governor, Godswill Akpabio, for the loss.

“Whatever may have
since happened to the oil wells in Akwa Ibom must be seen as the sole
responsibility of the government of Barrister Godswill Akpabio. If he
has lost our oil wells, it would be yet another testimony of how he
has, through fumbling ineptitude, negated the gains that I had won, and
the development that I had put in place for Akwa Ibom State. I think it
time Godwill Akpabio should own up to his monumental failures and stop
seeking to heap the blame on me,” Mr. Attah said in a statement in
Abuja.

Mr Attah, who
claimed he was not aware the two states were in dispute over the oil
wells until he read reports of the judgment, said he was constrained to
react to a statement credited to the state’s Commissioner of
Information, Aniekan Umanah, on behalf of Mr. Akpabio that he should be
blamed for “trading the interest of the state for selfish personal
political interest.”

“I would have
thought that the stories of my resource control fights with the former
President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, were well known and indeed
documented. Since it seems that there are people who were in diapers at
the time, and have refused to grow out of them, I am constrained to
make this clarification,” Mr. Attah said.

No deal

Denying the
existence of any signed agreement between him and former Rivers State
governor, Peter Odili, upon which the Supreme Court allegedly relied
for its judgment, Mr. Attah demanded that Mr. Umana be asked to produce
the agreement, since nobody else has corroborated his claim.

According to him,
at the time of his government’s dispute with the Federal Government
over the oil wells, the incumbent Secretary to the state Government,
Umana Okon Umana, was the Commissioner of Finance, while the present
Deputy Governor, Patrick Ekpotu, was the Commissioner of information,
and Mr. Akpabio, the then Commissioner for Environment and Mineral
Resources, who was better placed to know the true position of things
about the issue.

Mr. Attah said Mr.
Umanah (his former Commissioner of Finance), has since challenged the
present Rivers state government to produce the signed agreement on the
oil wells, while Mr. Ekpotu has insisted on delimitation of boundaries
by the National Boundary Commission (NBC), and expressed disappointment
that Mr. Akpabio is holding a contrary opinion.

“Two governors
cannot sit down and agree on what should be the boundary between them.
That is the statutory function of the National Boundary Commission
(NBC). If the agreement indeed exists, it cannot be genuine. There was
never a time the issue of oil wells was discussed in isolation between
Rivers and Akwa Ibom. It was always along with Cross River.

“So, how could only
two of the three governors involved have sat down to sign an agreement
that was used as a basis for the judgment? How come two boundaries
(between Cross River and Akwa Ibom as well as between Rivers and Akwa
Ibom ) were always involved, and now we are talking about only one
boundary in the judgment?

“Obasanjo took oil
wells from Akwa Ibom and gave some to Cross River on the East and River
State on the West without any explanation to his action.

“I was not aware at
all that Akwa Ibom was in court with Rivers State for 86 oil wells. I
don’t know for what reason that Akpabio did not want to involve me.
Whether for reason of inadequacy of ideas or pride, Akpabio wanted to
prove a point to himself and to the world that either whatever Attah
did, he could improve on it, or in fact that Attah did nothing, and he
did everything, and he did not want it to appear that Attah was in any
way involved in his winning back the remaining 86 oil wells.

“Perhaps, he wanted
to prove to the whole world that Attah failed in retrieving the 172 oil
wells Obasanjo took from Akwa Ibom, and that he was the one that got
everything back. But, now he has lost even the 86 wells that I got.
Therefore, to save face, they must quickly put the blame on Attah. That
is why he did not want to involve me. I would not want to be involved,
though for the sake of the state, I would have loved to,” he declared.

On the way forward,
he pointed out that since it is obvious that there was neither
technical nor legal basis for what Mr Obasanjo did, the NBC should sit
down to resolve the issue of boundaries between all the states on an
equitable basis.