By CrossRiverWatch Admin
Cross River state’s security has improved relative to the 2019–2023 period but is not yet perfect, peace practitioner and conflict mediator Dr. Efio-Ita Nyok has said.
Nyok while making the assertion as a guest on The People’s First Administration 2.0, a sponsored program on Sparkling FM Calabar, based his assessment on personal experience as a resident during the previous administration.
“I am not saying that under Governor Bassey Edet Otu the situation is perfect. I think it is a work in progress, but if you compare 2023 down to 2026, you will agree that at some point Cross River State, particularly the state capital, evolved into being the kidnapping headquarters of this country,” he said.
The alumnus of the Institute of Security and Forensic Studies Nigeria recalled that fear of abduction once dictated daily life in Calabar. “Immediately it was evening, everybody started finding their way home for fear of insecurity, mainly kidnapping,” he said. Medical practitioners, he noted, became prime targets, living as potential victims of abduction.
Nyok said the kidnapping of the time was largely ransom-driven, with victims held until payments were negotiated. He recalled cases where ransoms were as low as N30,000 to N50,000 — evidence, he said, of how deeply the vice had penetrated everyday life. “It was so bad,” he said.
The waterways were also unsafe, he said, with routes including the Calabar–Oron corridor becoming too dangerous to use. “We couldn’t take the waterways; we now had to use the same bad roads that we were trying to run away from,” he recalled.
Asked whether the situation had improved, Nyok said it had, relatively. “Until recently we have not had incidents of the kind of kidnapping we used to have on our waterways. It has reduced, and I think it has reduced for good. There is still room for improvement, but making that relative comparison, there has been improvement,” he said.
The peace advocate cautioned against declaring victory, describing security as a “work in progress” and urging consolidation of the gains, noting that the absence of frequent incidents does not amount to a permanent resolution of underlying threats.
On the institutional side, Nyok said the current administration appears to have activated the State Security Council, where the governor sits with service chiefs from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Police, Civil Defence and related agencies to design strategy.
He contrasted this with the previous administration, which he said barely convened the council — recalling the END SARS period when, according to him, the then governor reportedly called the service chiefs for help and was told there was nothing they could do.
“I want to believe that the current administration must have activated that particular system and process, and that would have contributed largely to the state of security and tranquility we are experiencing currently,” he said.
He noted, however, that security agencies are often reluctant to disclose operational details, leaving residents to draw inferences from observable outcomes.
Nyok acknowledged that pockets of violence remain — including early incidents in Ikom and Ogoja — but said these are not as rampant as the recurring clashes before 2023. For him, security is never a finished product, and comparative progress, however modest, matters for residents whose daily choices are shaped by safety.
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