Despite the intervention by President Goodluck Jonathan to
broker a truce between Bayelsa and Rivers States over some disputed oil wells,
the war of attrition raged on.
Amid recent
recriminations between the two states, President Jonathan had met with a
delegation from Rivers State at the State House, to broker a truce in the
simmering disagreement between the two neighbouring states over the ownership
of the oil wells. Although he was
initially billed to meet delegations from the two states, the president only
met with that of Rivers, led by the governor, Mr. Chibuike Amaechi. No reason
was given for the exclusion of the Bayelsa delegation from the meeting.
According to a source
at the meeting, which lasted more than one hour, the president explored means
of peacefully reconciling the differences over what some indigenes of Rivers
State claimed to be an attempt to excise some oil wells belonging to their
communities.
Giving its account of the dispute, Bayelsa said while Soku
is a village in Rivers State, the oil wells/oil field and the flow station are
located in the Oluasiri clan in Nembe Local Government Area of Bayelsa State. According
to it, the name Soku oil wells/oil field was wrongly given by the Shell
Petroleum Development Company Ltd (SPDC) because Soku village was their
operational base at that time.
The Bayelsa State Government explained that it was wrong for
Rivers to now claim River Santa Babara as the boundary between the Kalabari
people of Rivers State and the Nembe people of Bayelsa State, when in its White
Paper of 1993 on the report of the Justice Peter B. Akere panel it rejected the
river as the boundary landmark. It added that the 11th edition of the
administrative map of Nigeria has confirmed River San Bartholomew as the
boundary between Nembe of Bayelsa State and new Calabar (Kalabari) of Rivers
State, which has metamorphosed into the boundary between the two states.
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