Ben Ayade, Cross River State governot has decried the impact of the ongoing crisis in Southern Cameroon on the state, and believes that 80 percent of the security issues CRS has to deal with are directly drawn from the crisis just by the state’s borders.
Ayade who spoke after a Security Council meeting in Calabar, further explained that “the Southern Cameroon gorilla warfare is basically the Amazonians trying to secede from Cameroon. And as a result, there is an influx of persons into the country through over 27 illegal routes, who smuggle in goods of different kinds, sell them and use the money to acquire arms, recruit our young men and women and use them as machineries to fight back home. As a matter of fact, this is an international issue, completely outside the scope of the governor of a state and should be handled by the Presidency. It is against this background that we are addressing a letter to Mr. President officially soliciting his support to address these security challenges in the state occasioned by the illegal immigrants of Southern Cameroon to the state,” Ayade disclosed.
Continuing the governor said: “I will not hesitate to cry out that Cross River State has been left hanging and crying in this crisis. Aside from the humanitarian effort in addressing the issues in food security in the refugee camps and the communal skirmishes, the state has not received any special incentives knowing that a war at your backyard is a war in your house.”
He stressed further that “the war in Cameroon has direct negative impact on Cross River State and until we receive the needed federal attention, we will remain vulnerable to the daunting security challenges. Let me once again appeal to Mr. President and the National Security Adviser to as a matter of urgency intervene in the security issues in Cross River by ensuring that all military platforms are adequately upgraded and the police fully funded to tackle the rising cases of crimes in the state.”
Disclosing further decisions taken at the security meeting the governor stated: “Cross River and indeed Calabar is too beautiful, our people are too peaceful for what is battling us now. It is only from this security meeting that we realize that the only way we can address this issue is to address the illegal routes through which weapons, illegal goods and the rest enter into Calabar. Today, Calabar has become an illegal trading route by the immigrants who use same to acquire weapons as I mentioned earlier.”
On the ongoing inter states crisis, Ayade stated that, Cross River is at war with over four states bordering it, stressing that “these are issues that relate to land disputes long before my own father was born. So, as the governor, while struggling to deal with the internal issues, I am now confronted with international issues beyond the magnitude that the state can carry. He pleaded that support be given service commanders and the Nigerian Police from the centre for them to effectively and efficiently carryout out their statutory duties of protecting the country.
