The Cross River State governor, Sen. Prof. Ben Ayade was yet again conspicuously missing when governors from the six states that makes up the South South region met and agreed on setting up a security outfit to curb insecurity in the zone.
Neither the nor his deputy, Prof. Ivara Esu was at the meeting. This is the second time Cross River State will not be represented at a meeting of leaders in the zone. Recall last year, the governor and his deputy were also absent when governors from the region visited President Muhammadu Buhari to call for an audit and restructuring of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).
It is not immediately clear why the state was not represented at the meeting, although Delta Sate governor, Ifeanyi Okowa defended his counterpart when he said "Unfortunately, the Cross River Governor, Ben Ayade, was held back in Abuja and could not make it to the meeting".
South South To Launch Security Outfit
However, the governors announced, Thursday March 5, its decision to launch a security outfit to check insecurity in the region.
Delta State governor, Ifeanyi Okowa who disclosed this at the end of a meeting with other Governors from the South-South region, said they agreed that BRACED an acronym for (Bayelsa, Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Edo and Delta) Commission would work out the modalities for the security outfit.
He said;
“I am sure you know the five governors standing here out of the six governors in the South-South; We have just finished our governors’ forum meeting.“We took very far-reaching decisions and I must thank my brothers for attending this meeting.“We took decision concerning the BRACED Commission which was established 10 years ago by our colleagues who were governors before we came on board.“We have decided to restart the commission and ensure we provide the necessary logistics for it to function properly.“The commission is to help us look into the issues of regional economy and the need to collectively develop our region instead of working as individual states.“A lot has been done in terms of documentation in the past five years. We have agreed to restart the commission with the headquarters in River State.”
He added that in their next meeting which is scheduled to hold in few weeks time in Port Harcourt, the commission would brief it on the modalities of operating the regional security outfit.
He further said
“We also discussed the issues of Federation Accounts Allocation. We agreed that the 13 percent derivation fund should be deducted before the revenue derived from oil is shared.“This 13 percent derivation fund is supposed to be for the oil-producing states and we have agreed as governors to take up this matter at the appropriate level."
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