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If you are from Cross River North, kindly come with me. There is something important which you may already know but may not have given thought to, that I want to put in context for you.
Do you know that by land mass, all the five local governments that make up Cross River North, put together, are smaller than Akamkpa LGA? That means the Chairman of Akamkpa LGA is ruling over a land space bigger than the one ruled by the five LGA Chairmen of Northern Cross River, combined.
Ogoja is 972 km². Yala LGA has an area of 1,739 km². Obudu is 591.7km². Obanlikwu is 1,057km². And Bekwarra LGA is 306km². All the five combined, sum up to 4,665.7km². Akamkpa LGA alone has a land area of 5,049km². That means Akamkpa is bigger than the whole Cross River North by 383.3km². The remainder is still bigger than Bekwarra LGA. That also means Akamkpa alone is bigger than the entire Lagos State, which has a meagre land area of just 3,475 km².
Cross River North, however has a combined population of 1,116,700 people out of a total population of 4.406million for the whole State. That’s 25.3 percent of the State population. Between July to September (third quarter, 2024), from official FG documents, the five LGAs of Cross River North, also received net allocation totalling N5,349,067,043 from FAAC, excluding internally generated revenues.
So, 1,116,700 people, living within 4,664.7km square of land, were allocated N5.34billion in three months from FAAC. If you multiply this by four quarters of the year, that’s over N20billion. This is excluding internally generated revenues. Let’s also look at the constituency development funds allocated to Cross River North, through our federal lawmakers which also run into hundreds of millions of Naira. We have one Senator and two House of Reps members.
Looking ahead, let us project positively that this financial routine will repeat itself or even perform better and Cross River North will within the next 12 months, get say 30billion in remittances from both FAAC, IGR and Federal Constituency Development Funds, let us also assume that the encumbrances that used to swallow up LG allocations have been torpedoed by the Supreme Court judgment, is it not time to begin to ask questions about where these monies will be spent?
With this volume of resources, entering a space smaller than Akamkpa LGA, there is no tenable reason why our leaders cannot rebuild our water works instead of drilling boreholes, why they can’t give us electricity instead of rechargeable lamps they call street lights, why they can’t give us health insurance and equip our Primary Health centers, instead of three days health outreaches, why they can’t give us motorable roads, instead of bikes and kekes, why they can’t ensure food security instead of sharing rice and noddles and handouts? why they can’t give children free basic education instead of driving kids away from schools over illegal levies.
Comparatively, there is no reason why Cross River North should not be ahead of other parts of Cross River State and that should perturb our leaders who seem more concerned now about their personal egos and retention of power than the gruelling conditions of our people.
We just lost the golden opportunity of changing the fortunes of the North as the last eight years were blown away by our brother. The people who told us they were stepping in to rescue us should know that we will also hold them to account. They didn’t promise the people that they will step in and fight themselves. They didn’t tell us there were stepping in to divide and rule and hoodwink us. The people of the North know how to ask questions at the right time, and we will ask if the work is not done.
Yours sincerely,
Citizen Agba Jalingo.
Disclaimer: The opinion expressed in this article is strictly that of the author, Agba Jalingo, and does not represent TheLumineNews, its agent or the organization the author works for
