STUBBS CREEK: APPEAL TO THE IGNORANCE OF THE IBENO REFUGEE SETTLERS AND DIAMOND AKPANIKA'S HACHET JOB.

The settlers called Ibeno had been in communal depression since Gov. Umo Eno announced that Obolo State is a pipe dream that will never come to pass. Weeks later the aboriginal coastal Ibibios of Onna Eket, Esit Eket,Mkpat Enin and Ikot Abasi issued a press statement aligning with the governor's position. And yet information from the National Assembly trickles in that Obolo State cannot fly. The Ibeno spirit went so low hence Diamond Akpanika contrived what to do to lighten up their spirit for awhile. In order therefore to mislead his fellow settlers into a false hope, Diamond Akpanika hid under covered identity to author a fake story about new documents vindicating the slaves' ownership of Stubb's Creek. He knows his unenlightened people well. They rejoiced. While I won't give them the pleasure of responding to Akpanika's foolery, let me point out only three facts in the said fake write up to show how useless, disparate and fakish that write up is. 1. 1913 MAP: Akpanika under false identity claimed that a 13 map shows Ibeno as owners of Stubb's Creek. He misleads his people that the map is a new discovery. THE TRUTH: The 1913 map referred to is the official map of Eket District which I discovered in the British National Archives in London in 2021 and obtained a certified copy which is now available. Since 2021 this map has been well circulated far and wide and filed in the National Assembly State House of Assembly and the courts and Akpanika has a copy. This map guided in the drawing of a map for Akwa Ibom State in 2023, the very map that Diamond is contesting in court. So how is the map now a new discovery to Akpanika? The map was tendered by Eket in the 1916 case in the case between Eket and Ibeno. The map shows Ibeno with only 5 villages as at 1913. These villages were: Mkpanak , Ubenekang, Ibot Inyang (now called Iwuoachang), Ikot Utip now called (Okoroutip), and Ikot Itak. These 5 villages clustered on the mouth of Qua Iboe River running only 7 miles along the Atlantic coastline on the both sides of Qua Iboe River. This description of Ibeno was further affirmed in the 1936 intelligence report on Ibeno Clan authored by an English ethnographer, Captain J. Cook that Ibeno has only 7 miles along the coast. Again the 1956 Ibeno Memorandum to the G.I. Jones Commission affirmed the same fact but only that by this time Ibeno villages had increased to 7 villages— two more villages having been granted them by Onniong chiefs in ONNA LGA, not even on the Ekid side. So at what time did these ungrateful settlers go beyond 7 miles of the coast to own the entire Stubb's Creek coast running into over 50 miles? The 1913 map was one of the evidences relied upon by the European judge to declare in that case in 1916 that Ekid people/Southern Ibibios are the owners of Stubb's Creek . Between 1916 to now, how did the same 1913 map change to now favour the Ibeno settlers? 2. THE 1930 ORDINANCE: Akpanika under fake cover claimed in the said write up about "a newly discovered 1930 Ordinance", which he claims proves Ibeno as owners of Stubb's Creek. THE TRUTH: The 1930 Ordinance is simply a forest reserve law made by the colonial government in 1930. It is not and has never been missing, for Ibeno to discover it today! The 1930 ordinance has been widely cited by Ekid in all their documents concerning Stubb's Creek because the Ordinance favors Ekid. This was one of the Laws that persuaded the Akpata Commission of Inquiry of 1993 to declare that Ekid is the owner of the Stubb's Creek. So Akpanika,out of lack of what to say, citing this 1930 Ordinance as if it is a newly discovered document, is out of the fact that he's exhausted of all his lies, so he's now doing recycling of lies to keep misleading his large illiterate population. His fraudulent father who died with indictment of fraud hanging on his neck deceived Ibeno people like that to die trying to fight Ibibio in 1993 for a land they do not and will never have. 3. MR. IME EKPO'S PURPORTED DOCUMENT: Diamond Akpanika under fake cover claims that the deceased commissioner for lands before he died left behind a title document that gave Stubb's Creek to Ibeno. To this ,4 questions arise: (1) What is the title of such document? How do you make reference to the existence of some documents without citing the title? This is because the document does not exist but only in the fertile imagination of Diamond Akpanika (2) why mention a dead man who cannot make a statement of affirmation or denial of the existence of such document? (3) Do Commissioners go about creating documents to donate lands to communities ? (4) Assuming without conceding that such document exists, in law, can a Govt official do any act to defeat a subsisting court judgement so that the purported Ime Ekpo's document would stand to defeat the 1916 judgment? The answer is a big no! FINALLY, Diamond Akpanika after encountering me in a radio interview in 2021 and saw his nakedness where all his pack of lies collapsed under my erudition, he since then avoided any debate with me under the pretext that I was not a lawyer by reason of the fact that I was not yet called to the Nigerian Bar. Now I have been called to the Nigerian Bar as Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria, and the impediment against facing me in a legal debate has thus been vacated. I therefore invite him for a debate on the history and the law as concerning Stubb's Creek. Hiding behind screens to write fake stories to appeal to the ignorance of largely half educated fishermen population is an old antics that no longer avails him. I enjoin the public to ignore Diamond Akpanika in whatever guise and cover he might come.