The Nation Newspaper

Tag: CALABAR

  • Rising sea level threatens Lagos, Warri, Port Harcout, Calabar, says minister

    Rising sea level threatens Lagos, Warri, Port Harcout, Calabar, says minister

    The Federal Government warned yesterday that about 32 million residents  along the coastlines in Lagos and the Niger Delta region may be displaced because of the rise in sea level.

    The government noted that with an accelerated sea level rise of 0.5 meters, 35 per cent of the Niger Delta landmass would be lost.

    It added that with accelerated sea level rise of 1.0 meters, 75 per cent of the Niger Delta will be gone under water.

    The Minister of Environment, Laurentia Mallam, alerted the coastline residents to the looming danger at this year’s World Environment Day, with the theme: Raise Your Voice Not the Sea Level.

    The minister said cities, such as Lagos, Port Harcourt, Calabar, and Warri, which are located along the coast, are vulnerable to sea level rise and storm surge.

    She said: “Nigeria is endowed with low–lying coastline of about 853 kilometres long. This coastline is very important to the economy of the country. It accounts for most of the country’s industrial establishments and energy infrastructure, while major settlements, such as Lagos, Port Harcourt, Calabar and Warri are located along the coast and, therefore, sensitive to sea level rise and storm surge.

    “Studies have projected that with an accelerated sea level rise of 0.5 meters, 35 per cent of the Niger Delta landmass will be lost, and with accelerated sea level rise of 1.0 meters, 75 per cent of the Niger Delta will be gone under water.

    “Given this scenario, it implies that nearly 32 million people (22.6 per cent of the national population) who live along the coastal zone are at risk of becoming environmental refugees. Such forced movement could result in social frictions arising from demands of land resources for economic activities by the refugees.

    “Moreover, many fishing grounds will be adversely affected, thus threatening major livelihood of the rural dwellers along the Nigerian coast. This is because the mangrove swamps provide breeding grounds and refuge for many fish species.

    The intrusion of saline water due to sea level rise will have an undesirable consequence on fresh water resources of the affected areas.”

  • Firm inaugurates education projects in host communities

    Firm inaugurates education projects in host communities

    As part of its Corporate Social Responsibility, the United Cement Company (UNICEM), has inaugurated two projects in its host communities in Cross River State.

    The projects- teachers quarters, a  four-room self contained at Mbobui Primary School, Akampka local government area and a twin two-bedroom flat at the Youth Corps Members’ Lodge at Government Comprehensive Secondary School, Akwa Ikot Effanga community in Akpabuyo local government area, were to provide accommodation for teachers and corps members’ posted to both schools  in the communities.

    At the commissioning of the multi-million naira project, UNICEM Managing Director Olivier Lenoir said he was pleased to be part of the development the education sector is experiencing in both communities.

    His words: “In line with developmental governance, these projects were conceived by the communities and supported by UNICEM to address accommodation problem experienced by teachers and corps members, which often discourages them from accepting postings to the schools. By supporting this initiative; we believe we will be addressing that challenge and promoting education which is one of the focuses of our Corporate Social Responsibility programme.”

    Lenoir praised the partner communities for their peaceful disposition which has not only presented a conducive working environment for their operations but has also led to the expansion of their plant.

    In separate remarks, the Chairperson of the Community Trust Committee(CTC), Akwa Ikot Effanga, Mrs Christy Ise and Chairman Mbobui( CTC),Sir Donators  Etta described UNICEM as a responsive and responsible corporate citizen.

    “Our children will learn more and become better people in the society because we will accommodate good corps members as more of them will be willing to stay where they are posted,” Christy said.

    “The teachers’ quarters was conceived on the need to provide a befitting accommodation for their primary school teachers for effective teaching considering the place of primary education in every child’s life,” added Etta.

    “This will also encourage teachers to redouble their efforts in the task of giving proper training which will invariably boost learning in the school.”

  • Boko Haram scare in Benin, Calabar, Yenagoa

    Parents rushed to pick their wards from schools yesterday as rumourswent viral  that  Boko Haram insurgents were in Benin, the Edo State capital.

    The rumours started when pupils, who were unaware of the Nigeria Union of Teachers’ (NUT’s) closure of schools, found them empty.

    It was learnt that some of them called their parents and claimed that Boko Haram was in the state.

    Police spokesman Noble Uwoh said there were no insurgents in the state.

    He said the state was safe and urged the residents not to panic.

    In Calabar, the Cross River State capital, a false alarm was raised about the abduction of pupils in several schools. There were also rumours of explosions.

    The panic in the city was palpable as the news spread like wildfire.

    But when our reporter visited Henshaw Town Primary School and Bishop King Primary School, the security guards said the schools were shut due to the teachers’ protest.

    The guard at Bishop King said: “Some policemen and soldiers just left here now because they heard the same rumour and came to check.

    “But as you can see there is no problem. The news is false. The school was closed because the teachers were protesting the Chibok girls’ kidnap.

    The Joint Task Force (JTF), Operation Pulo Shield, has denied the presence of Boko Haram members in Bayelsa State.

    JTF’s Media Coordinator Lt. Col. Mustapha Anka debunked the rumour, describing it as false and misleading.

    He said it was the work of mischief makers, who wanted to create panic among the people.

    Col. Anka said the closure of schools was in line with a directive by the NUT National Chairman, Michael Olukoya.

    He said Olukoya ordered all members to stay away from the classrooms to protest the killing of their colleagues and abduction of the Chibok girls.

    “The JTF urge the people to go about their business without fear as the command was working in collaboration with other security agencies to protect lives and property,” Col Anka said.

  • Gbomogbomo of Calabar

    Gbomogbomo of Calabar

    Gbomogbomo. It is Yoruba’s word for a kidnapper, especially the variant who specialises in the abduction of children. The child’s age does not matter. Neither does the sex. And unlike the other variant, who makes a phone call to the parent or guardian or employer of the ‘hostage’ to demand ransom, gbomogbomo never calls anyone. He or she just grabs the child and disappears with the child. And most of the time, it is forever. His motive is not the money from the parents or guardians or employers of their victims. Their loyalty, like those of hired assassins, is always to their patrons, who we have been told are usually the rich and the powerful. And it is believed that gbomogbomos thrive when major elections are around the corner.

    There are also those gbomogbomo whose specialty is to steal kids and either sell to childless couples or into the underground slave market.

    It is the sort of tragedy that nothing prepares a man or woman for. For us in this business of minding other people’s business, the activities of gbomogbomo is big news, especially when it is on a high scale. What an average news editor will ask upon being told of kids’ abduction is: how many children were involved? The higher the figure the better the headline.

    But it is a different ballgame when it happens to you or someone very close. That is when one realises that people make up statistics and that statistics are not just numbers. If you scratch further, you will see that they have faces, blood and addresses.

    Consider: Calabar, the Cross River State capital, which the state government has done all within its power to market as the tourism headquarters of Nigeria, has had and is still having scary moments as a result of gbomogbomo. Kids are disappearing and no one is calling to ask for ransom. They just disappear and are never seen again. It is a situation that has put parents on the edge because of its frightening dimension. There are also instances where children were snatched from the arms of their mothers or guardians by abductors who pretend to offer them lift in their cars; others are abducted right from their homes while their parents are not at home or in another part of the house.

    The targets, we are told, are children under 12. Their background, whether from rich or poor families, means nothing. After all, these little ones are not abducted for money.  Like typical gbomogbomo cases, several theories, from abduction for rituals, trafficking and sale to childless couples, have been formulated to explain the development, which has forced parents to take extra precautions to save their children from the hands of these agents of darkness.

    A report in this paper last Friday quoted a single mother of three children as saying: “I now pray double about the safety of my children. Whenever I am not with them, for instance when they go to school, my mind is never at rest until I see them again, safe and sound. Personally, I have also taken precautions on my own to ensure their safety. I don’t let them play around the house anymore. Now, I ensure they are always indoors, if there is nothing necessary to take them outside. It has become a worrisome situation and we are praying they should do something urgently about it. We know Calabar as a peaceful place devoid of all these kinds of things. Now, we don’t know what is happening.”

    The sad part of the gbomogbomo of Calabar is that no place is sacred. God means nothing to them, neither does His house. Earlier this year, a boy, identified simply as Victor, was snatched by an unknown person in a church during service. He is just 3. His parents must be asking all those rhetorical questions: Why us? Who did we offend? Of course, they offended no one. They were just victims of men whose happiness comes from nothing but wreaking havoc on others. The modern-day slave merchants, whose hearts, I know, have been sold to the devil. Damn heartless bastards. That is what they are.  They are just so heartless.

    Imagine a case at Ikot Ansa in Calabar Municipality, a child was supposed to be dedicated in church on a Sunday, arrangements were made. Food and drinks were ready. Invitees must have also been salivating about the food and perhaps practised one dance-step or the other.  But, when members of the household woke up in the morning, the baby was nowhere to be found. The baby was abducted the night before. The family was shattered.  They did not know when someone came in and abducted the child. Or, did the baby crawl away from the bed?

    The mother, I understand, has been in a coma and the father is hysterical. It was a tragedy nothing prepared them for. Not their education; not their age; not their intelligence. What should have been a celebration of life, with azonto and ethighi dance steps just became a macabre dance, which no one likes to be part of.

    Another terrifying case was that of a four-year old boy, Effiong, son of a bank security man and a fried yam seller, who was abducted at the Ekorinim axis of C74alabar in a car with no registration number.

    But nemesis is catching up with some of them. Some weeks back, four girls, aged between four and six, were hawking sachet water on a street in Calabar when some men attempted to snatch them. They raised the alarm and the men were snatched instead and taken to the Atakpa Police Station where a mammoth crowd gathered to see the faces of evil. Victor Bassey, whose face lights up this column, was arrested after a failed attempt to snatch a baby from her mother inside a cab.

    The situation has become so disturbing that a member of the State House of Assembly, Ngim Okpo, brought a motion of Urgent Public Interest “on the increasing incidents of child snatching where in recent times, have been several reported cases of kidnapping of innocent children by some unscrupulous elements for alleged ritual purposes”.

    My final take: Neither Calabar nor any part of our country deserves this sort of tragedy. This madness must stop. I also declare that evil will be the lot of gbomogbomo and their patrons. Tragedy of uncommon hue will be their lot.  They will know no peace until they fall prey to drunk drivers. It shall not be well with them. By fire, by force, their families will mourn them.

  • Rainstorm ravages Calabar

    Rainstorm ravages Calabar

    Residents of Calabar, the Cross River State capital, are counting their losses after a rainstorm ravaged the city on Sunday night.
    The rain, which lasted over six hours, pulled down houses, blew off roofs and caused floods in many parts of the city.
    A statement by the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) said 350 homes in Calabar South and Calabar Municipality were  affected.
    Most residents, including women and children, spent the night in the open as they watched their property being swept away.
    When our reporter visited some places, there were household items scattered all over. Many were busy scooping water from their houses.
    The flood was caused by blocked drainage and the narrow nature of some channels, which could not contain the high volume of water.
    A widow, Mrs. Theresa Idum, lamented the loss of her house and property. She urged the government to help rebuild her home.
    Mrs. Grace Minika, whose five buildings were ravaged, said water flowed to the compound though a broken wall.
    SEMA’s Director General Vincent Aquah sympathised with the victims and promised that government agencies would tackle the problem.

  • NIMASA takes safety to Calabar small boat operators

    NIMASA takes safety to Calabar small boat operators

    Worried by the level of fatalities recorded by small boats on the waterways in Calabar, the Eastern Zone of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) has carried out a campaign of safety to passengers and operators.

    Zonal coordinator, Mr Tony Ogadi, who led the campaign to the Safe Journey and Creek Town jetties in Calabar said so much attention was being paid to larger vessels than the small crafts which actually recorded more incidents.

    The agency also donated 30 life vests to the operators at the two jetties.

    Speaking at the campaign tagged “Raising safety awareness among the maritime workers union and passengers”, he said the level of safety among small among small boats was not so good hence their intervention to regulate their activities.

    Ogadi who is in charge of Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River and Rivers States said, “Actually the level of safety now is not too good and that is why NIMASA is concerned about it.

    “In every port office we have district surveyors who go around to ensure safety, but most of the inspections are geared towards the very big crafts to ensure safety. Now you find out that most of the big vessels don’t have these incidences we are thinking of. When they occur they are few. Where we have the recurrent one are the small craft operators. We had to see that the little ones too are abiding by the regulations. That is why we decided to make the first move and provide the vests before we start regulating. Mostly, the level of people that partake in this kind of transportation are the economically disadvantaged people who may not have the wherewithal to acquire the vests, both the boat operators and the passengers. So we decided to give them the vests to ensure that we have safety of lives.

    “Hence forth it will become a routine exercise of our safety unit to ensure that life vests are given to them. Intend to come in to regulate those who operate small crafts because of the casualty we have been recording in the past and want to make an incursion into this and reduce to to the barest minimum.

    “Safety goes with security and NIMASA decided to go the extra mile to go into a partnership with the Nigerian Navy to ensure that it guarantees safety and went further into a partnership with to Global West Vessels specialist to provide a platform to enable us patrol these water ways and ensure that the safety tenets are adhered to. With time the issues of accidents would be almost eliminated. You cannot entirely eliminate it but you guard against occurrences.”

    Cross River State chairman of the Maritime Union Workers of Nigeria, Mr Christopher Edem expressed appreciation for the gesture and promised to abide by best practices for travel on the water ways.

  • Fire guts Watt market in Calabar

    A section of the Watt Market in Calabar along the Bedwell Road axis was gutted by fire Wednesday evening.

    Affected were several shops among which included a major rug carpet dealer.

    The fire which started at about 6pm it was learnt started from a generator and was made worse by a container of petrol nearby.

    It took concerted efforts of traders who were still around to put off the fire with soapy water.

    One of the traders who gave his name as Okonkwo and who helped put out the fire said they had called the emergency response centre but they did not turn up until the fire was put out.

    He was grateful the situation did not escalate to a major disaster.

    No one was hurt in the incident.

  • Calabar, oh Calabar

    Calabar, oh Calabar

    The image of Calabar, the Cross River State capital, in my head formed out of my two visits is that of a great city. It is a beautiful place, with hotels in almost every nook and cranny. Its cleanliness charmed me.

    I have not been there in the last few years. But from reports, Calabar has not lost its hotels; neither has the cleanliness gone.

    The mention of Calabar conjures the image of a great place, where fun walks on all fours and where enjoyment is unlimited. The Calabar festival, for instance, become so popular that many, within and without, mark it out on their calendar and will not miss it for anything. Of recent too, many remember it as the home of EbonyLife Tv, that baby of the delectable Mo Abudu. The activities of General Electric have also put Calabar on the front burner in recent times. And to be candid, the state government has not been doing badly.

    I am, however, worried for Calabar. One of the sources of my worry is Tinapa Resort. Conceived as a resort and shopping centre of no mean repute, it held a lot of promise. It was planned as a place where families could come to for the weekend, have nice accommodation to sleep, have great shops to shop and leave with a great sense of fulfillment.

    About a month or so ago, the Area Comptroller of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) in charge of Akwa Ibom, Cross River and the Calabar Free Trade Zone Command, Bamidele Akande, visited the Cross River State Security Adviser. Akande, who had just resumed, wanted to familiarise himself with the state government. During the visit, he said businesses were dying in the state.

    He pointed out that with a viable seaport, businesses should be booming. The Tinapa Resort was one of the businesses he spoke about. Investors in the resort are bailing out because business has not been what they expected. Some of the traders in Tinapa say most times they stay from morning till night and see no customer.

    But what is the problem? I have been informed that the problems are not much. They are all about failing infrastructure. Topping the list are the shallow Calabar channel and the bad condition of the Calabar-Itu federal highway, which is a major link road linking the state to other states. The bad sections of the road are adversely affecting economic activities in the state. It has made businessmen from Abia and the neighbouring states to stay away from Calabar.

    The dredging of the Calabar Channel is another cause for concern. Those in the know say if something is not done about it urgently, things may go worse. The shallow nature of the Calabar channel has led to a situation where goods destined for the zone have to berth in Onne in Rivers State, a development which has created several logistic problems for business. The Federal Government must dredge the Calabar Sea Port; after all, others in the country are frequently being dredged.

    The Calabar Free Trade Zone has not played the role it was established for because of the Calabar channel’s challenge. People who bring in their goods or want to take out their goods go through hell. The Calabar Port, one of the oldest ports in Nigeria, which used to attract shipping lines, is a shadow of its old self.

    Major clients of the Calabar Port, such as Flour Mills, Unicem and Dangote, have been unable to bring full cargo to Calabar. Usually, they drop half of the load in Lagos before heading for the Calabar Port. What this means is that a cargo ship load that could have come at once per voyage ends up being conveyed to Calabar Port in two or three voyages. We all know this increases operating cost and by extension cost of the end product.

    Most of the businessmen in the Free Trade Zone usually have their goods coming either through Lagos or Rivers State ports. No shipping line is, in the real sense, operating this route because they say there is no adequate traffic, and thus cost is higher.

    It is like double jeopardy for the traders. One, the port is not fully functional and the road that could have helped out on the way from Onne Ports is also bad.

    The two major challenges crippling businesses in Calabar are not immediately within the reach of the state government. From information at my disposal, the intra-city roads are in good state. It is the link road (which is a federal road) that is in a sorry state. The non-completion of the dredging of the Calabar channel to 9.4m meters is also not the business of the state government.

    The drop in performance in general cargo and container volumes are purely caused by the non-completion of dredging and Maersk line’s pull-out of container services from Calabar. The withdrawal of Baco Liner Services from the Calabar Port means it is now completely without a container service. What this means is that all the cocoa exporters are trucking to Lagos. This is loss of revenue to the Cross River State, whose share of monthly pay-out from the Federation Account has dwindled like many others.

    These challenges and others have also made Tinapa not the viable business that Donald Duke conceived it to be. After years of being unable to kick off because of policy matters, it took off but bank facilities with which it was built had so built up that now the Assets Management Company of Nigeria (AMCON) has taken it over and is shopping for new managers. One hopes this will yield a good fruit.

    In the meantime, this is my plea: the bad roads leading out of and into Calabar must be fixed and the dredging must also be completed. Both must be done at once so that the envisaged increase in container business may be realised. If the dredging alone is done, the bad road will still prevent the importers from the Southeast and Northcentral states from bringing in their cargo through Calabar. And if the road alone is done, container business will still be stagnant and Onne may be the beneficiary of this.

  • Calabar’s gullies of death

    Calabar’s gullies of death

    This place was just a road, but before we knew it, the houses started coming down. The whole of the places you see this gully were houses. I have been living in this area since 2007 and with each passing rains it got worse. I have lived here and seen houses go because of this situation. For me, I don’t have anywhere else to go. Would we run away and leave our houses? Well some people have left but not all of us can do so

    They go to bed every night with the consciousness that they may wake up at the bottom of a ditch or even be floating in one of the many rivers that surround Calabar, the Cross River State capital.

    Normally, people step out of their houses onto their veranda, but for these people stepping out of the wrong door could send one hurtling down the side of a steep gully several metres deep to serious injuries or even a horrible death.

    This is the story of residents of the several gully erosion sites that dot the state capital.

    Why would they continue to live under such precarious conditions? Why would they not move? The likely answers one would get is “move to where?” and “we don’t have any place else to go.”

    They would tell you when they lived there, there were no gullies. They bought or built their houses there and the gullies developed due to erosion over time and government neglect of their pleas when the problem was developing.

    In one of such places at Ikot Ekpo community in Calabar Municpality, the community leader, Elder Aye Edet Aye, whose house is right on the edge of one of the gullies said when he bought the land in 2007, there was no gully. He said where the wide chasm is right now used to be a road.

    He said: “When I bought the land there was no trace of this. The problem started in early 2008. It started as a very small gully back then down at the stream about 400 metres from where we are right now. But with the rains and consequent running off water, it started widening. We informed the government severally. We have gone to the State Emergency Management Agency, Ministry of Works, Ministry of Environment, the Niger Delta Development Commission, and the Calabar Municipal Council among other agencies of government but we got nothing.”

    Aye said some of the agencies had sent people a couple of times to come and look at the situation but nothing has ever come out of it.

    He said as a result of this the residents had to resort to their own remedial measures to check the constant eating away of the sides of the widening gully, putting their lives and property more at risk with every passing moment, especially with the coming of the rains.

    Some measures they adopted were planting bamboo and burying tyres in the gully as well as lining the edge with concrete. Though it may have slowed down the pace of the damage, it has not been helped.

    He said several people, including children, have died in the gully as well as several houses washed away.

    Another resident of the area, Sunday Odey, said: “This place was just a road, but before we knew it the houses started coming down. The whole of the places you see this gully were houses. I have been living in this area since 2007 and with each passing rains it got worse. I have lived here and seen houses go because of this situation. For me, I don’t have anywhere else to go. Would we run away and leave our houses? Well some people have left but not all of us can do so.

    “It is very dangerous and I must tell you that even this place we are standing having this interview is not safe. To be honest it can just come down and down into the gully. I have seen it happen before. That is how the gully keeps getiing wider and wider. As the rainy season is about to start now it is only God that we pray will look after us.”

    At the Nyanasang community, the situation is not better. Dr Edem Asuquo, the community head, blames the widening chasm on the poor work done by the engineers who constructed some roads in the area.

    Asuquo said: “Before now, we have not been experiencing erosion problems but the present gully erosion challenges are as a result of the poor water diversion channel done by the contractor that handled the road construction of Access road, Akpandem and Canaan Avenue in 2011.

    “We are to exposed to danger as some houses are at the mouth of the gully, some their fence have collapsed, other peoples farm have been washed away but our luck is that so far no life is lost yet unlike other places.”

    At Atakpa community in Bayside, Calabar, the chairman of the Bayside Development Association, Chief Esin Cocobassey, said they had lost over 50 plots of land to the erosion. He said erosion is threatening so many buildings, including the Union Bank.

    “This place used to be a road,” he said pointing to where the vast chasm lay. “I could say we have lost an entire village in this area. The gully has been here a long time and it is expanding. The state government planted gmelina and bamboo to help check the problem but it has not been much use, because water must still find its level.”

    For residents living close to the Edim Otop gully the images of a man who lost his entire family members to the precarious nature of the environment last year, are still fresh in their minds.

    The Edim Otop gully known as Burrow Pit it was gathered also started as a small gully in the early 90s and was worsened by the excavation of sand from the area for building.

    According to a government official said people who were living in the area occurred were doing so illegally and calls have been made on them severally to leave the place as it was not safe. He also said several attempts to stop people from digging sand from the area had been to no avail and this was contributing seriously to erosion in the area.

    The situation has even grown so bad it has threatened to divide the Atimbo Road. A child was recently died on this road as she fell into the ditch, it was learnt. When our reporter visited the area, it was a yawning gap that was already eating up into the road. Several houses hung precariously along the sides and residents expressed fear that in no time the road would be cut off and their houses washed away.

    Areas with similar scenarios include Beebosco, Ikot Anwatim, New Airport among others.

    As a form of respite for some of these people, the World Bank would spearhead an intervention in five gully erosion sites in Calabar, the Cross River State capital within the next two months.

    The intervention would constitute the first phase of such which would be under the Nigeria Erosion Watershed Management Project (NEWMAP) and is expected to cover other areas of the state in subsequent phases.

    Project coordinator, Mr Fidelis Anukwa, said gully erosion sites in this phase include Ikot Anwatim, Ikot Ekpo, Edim Otop, Nyaghasang and Atakpa.

    He said the project would be carried with a participatory integrated approach where communities would be carried along every step of the way.

    A consultant to the project, Mrs Mojisola Akpojyovbi, said they had been bringing contractors to see how the slopes can be stabilised.

    She said work would begin on the sites in less than two months and only people whose house were affected by the remedial measures would be compensated after consultations and negotiations.

    Victims whose houses were already destroyed by the erosion, they would not be accountable for, she said. There would also be a welfare programme for the communities, he said.

    Having received several failed promises b various agencies to tackle their predicaments, those affected hope that this time the intervention would be for real and holistic.

    “If they come, and I stress, if they come, we would not want them to come and do any kind of shoddy job and go away,” a resident of Atakpa community hoped.

     

  • Calabar suburbs’ residents groan

    Calabar suburbs’ residents groan

    Residents of satellite towns in Calabar, the Cross River State capital, are complaining about insecurity and other challenges, writes NICHOLAS KALU, Calabar.

    Calabar, the Cross River State capital, is generally believed to be most peaceful city in the country, with arguably the lowest crime rate. However, for residents of Satellite Town adjoining the University of Calabar, a whole more needs to be done about security before they would come to terms with this assertion. The satellite town in Calabar Municipality was developed in the early 2000s as the pace of development picked up in the capital city, especially due to the new tourism slant of the state government. Its growth was propelled by the need for expansion. Within a few years an area which was overgrown with bushes had metamorphosed into a choice suburb. The beauty and tranquillity of this enclave is gradually turning into a nightmare for residents. The deplorable situation is ironically fed by a good road network and nice location. Residents of the area lament that the poor state of security in the area is stifling the positive attributes of their once cherished environment. One of the residents of the area who gave his name as Felix Ibanga said common criminalities in the area include armed robbery, kidnapping, mugging and rape. “We know these incidents occur in other parts of the city, but the rate at which these things happen here within the satellite town is so worrisome,” said Ibanga, who had been the victim of a recent armed robbery incident in the area recounted.

    “Recently I was a victim of a robbery incident. The boys who were carrying out the raid took their time, like they felt nothing was going to happen as they robbed from house to house on my street. It was a long time after they had left that the police arrived. These cases have been frequent and on the increase and are really giving many of us a cause for worry. We have endured it for a long time and I think it is time something decisive be done about it. We need more security presence in this area.”

    It was gathered that the situation had led to the emergence of vigilante groups in the area but these had fizzled out as it was not helping the situation.

    Thomas Akan, another resident of satellite town, said: “We actually agreed that we did not want the vigilante groups anymore because the rate of crime in the area was not reducing with their coming. In fact we were worried these groups of boys with machetes and other crude weapons were also getting involved in these nefarious acts.”

    A female resident of the area, Mrs Affiong Ekpang, also said: “Robbery, rape and other incidents are very rampant around here. By God’s grace I have never been a victim of any but something must be done urgently about it. If the police could have more presence here from the evenings even up to the early mornings I believe it would go a long way to save us from this situation. The feeling of fear we live with in this area is not comforting at all.

    “Just the other day a neighbour who was just taking a walk close to his house was mugged by some of these criminals and it was just about 6 pm. He was seriously beaten up and his phone and some money taken from him. How can one live in an area where he or she is not safe to walk about when it is not even dark yet. In fact many of us would have relocated from this area if not that the houses we lived in here are our own. The situation demands urgent attention.”

    Another resident, who simply gave his name as Samuel also, said: “The boys, I don’t believe come from here. They come from the Edim Otop community and Esuk Utan village which is close by the river side. So they move around about 6 or 7 and come to wait for their victims. Sometimes they wait for you and as you drive in they come in and attack. You cannot move around there by 7 o’clock alone. The police presence is poor. They don’t come. We have only had vigilantes who come to extort money and go. Most of them before 10 they have even gone. Vigilantes some of them are even accused of organizing the crime themselves. For some time now they have not been there. Most nights we hear serious shootings by robbers who come on operations. It is very scary.

    “It has been happening on a daily basis. We hear gunshots. I would not say the situation is really out of control but we need security. If they can be coming on patrol and stay even up to 11 o’clock it would help as the criminals would know there is always security.

    “They should gather to infuse fear in the boys, because what happens is that the boys have a field day. They have the whole night to themselves and nobody comes to harass them so they have time to carry out their nefarious activities. Once I had to text a friend to call the police because they were robbing my neighbour. They could not get access to me because of the kind of security doors I have in my place. We have even on some occasions had broad daylight robberies in this area.”

    Commissioner for Police, Kola Sodipo, attributed the rising spate of criminal activities in Satellite town and other areas in the Calabar metropolis to the clampdown by security agencies on militants, oil thieves and sea pirates along the waterways.

    He said: “While offences against public order and or law enforcement measures reduced from 151 true cases in 2012 to 116 in 2013, offences against property like armed robbery, theft, house/store breaking, obtaining under false pretences and cheating increased. Kidnapping and attempted murder cases also increased.

    “This can be attributed to the enforcement measures against militants, bunkering and sea pirates along Calabar wetlands resulting in upsurge of criminality along Atimbo, Satellite Town and Uwanse areas of the Calabar metropolis.”

    He however said they were equal to the task of checking the menace. He also called for more support of the civil populace in providing information as this had paid off in the past in fighting crime.