2024 C'River Cocoa Allocation Unjust, Anti 'People First', Etung Youths Cry Out
By Ebi COLLINS
As controversy continues to trail the 2024 allocation of the Cross River State Cocoa Estate, Bendeghe-Ekiem youths of the landlord communities have called on Governor Bassey Otu to investigate the double-dealings, injustice and usurpations that characterised the just-concluded exercise.
Recall that youths in Agbokim and Etomi communities had earlier taken to the streets in peaceful protests to air out their displeasure over the allocation.
Equally demonstrating, the Bendeghe-Ekiem youths have lashed out at the Ebori Nku-led Cocoa Allocation and Regeneration Committee for doing a shoddy job that is shrouded in secrecy.
The youths accused the members of the committee of reserving the most viable cocoa plots for themselves, family members, politicians and highly placed people in the society, with a chunk of the most viable blocks allocated to big cocoa merchants whom are strangers while they shamelessly allocated the moribund, good-for-nothing plots, which ought to be marked for regeneration, to the common people, majority of them youths.
The Committee was also accused of placing the A-list plots allocated to themselves and their cohorts in lesser categories in the selfish bid to pay smaller charges as government fees, and marking the moribund farms as 'category A' and making the common man pay on their behalves.
The youths further described the committee's act as 'insubordination' which is against the present administration's desire to take restive youths off the streets through meaningful agriculture, with the state cocoa estate as the pivot for Etung and its neighbouring local government areas.
According to them, it is starkly in contrast and logically incongruous to the 'People First' agenda of the Governor Bassey Otu-led leadership.
Speaking, the leader of the protesting youths, who simply gave his name as Zeal Agbor, demanded that government to revisit the allocation process and make sure that it aligned with its agenda of making the common Cross River youths, especially in the landlord communities, engage in the profitable venture of cocoa farming, against the restive nature they have hitherto been notorious for.
The livid youth leader blamed their representative in the Committee, Amba Ogar, who is the Secretary, for playing a subservient role against the community for some selfish, self-serving, sinister and politically motivated reasons.
Agbor rued the unfortunate development where the beneficiary of the appointment (Amba Ogar) made no significant contributions before, during and after the electioneering and eventual emergence of the Otu-led administration, little wonder he (the Secretary) boasts of buying the said appointment.
Recall that several stakeholders and opinion leaders in Etung have also lent their voices, calling on government to listen to the yearnings, hue and cries of the Cocoa landlord communities of Etung, noting that, should same youths agitating for inclusion through the cocoa estate be left unattended to, then the end result would be a security situation where those in the allocated cocoa plots may likely not be able to gainfully possess those farms because of intrusion from aggrieved youths.
The stakeholders had also called on the present administration to live to its truly 'People First' mantra.
