About 200 primary school teachers of Akwa Ibom State origin sacked from the employ of Cross River State government in the wake of the disputed 76 oil wells, Wednesday, protested the alleged refusal of Akwa ibom government to re-absorb them.
Armed with placards of sundry
inscriptions, the teachers recalled how the former governor of Cross
River State, Mr. Donald Duke, sacked them over the alleged ceded oil
wells from Cross River State to Akwa Ibom State.
The protesters, who
marched along Wellington Bassey Way, leading to Government House, later
took their grievances to the stadium where Governor Akpabio was expected
to address Akwa Ibom people on Nigeria’s 54th independence anniversary.
Speaking
with journalists, leader of the protest, Mr. Elijah James Ekanem, said
they had taken the matter up with the state government, since they were
sacked from Cross River in 2006 in the middle of the oil wells politics,
to no avail.
He recalled that key government functionaries,
including the deputy governor, Noble Lady Valerie Ebe, Head of Service,
Mrs. Cecilia Udoessien, and managers of the State Universal Basic
Education, SUBEB, were notified of the matter but with no commensurate
action to address their plights.
He said: “They have interviewed us
for more than 20 times on this matter and each time, they will tell us
that the case was on the governor’s table, that we should go and wait
for directives.
“We have been waiting since 2006 and many of us have
died while waiting for the government to make good its promise to absorb
us.”