The Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice of Akwa Ibom State, Uko Udom SAN, has dismissed media reports suggesting that the 76 oil wells legally owned by the state may be returned to Cross River State, insisting that nothing has been ceded.
Reports had indicated that the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission projected Cross River to be re listed as an oil producing state after receiving the final report of the Federal Government Inter Agency Committee on oil producing states. The committee was mandated to determine scientifically the exact location of oil and gas assets within Nigeria’s onshore and offshore boundaries.
Speaking at a media briefing at the Government House Conference Hall, Udom said the state reviewed the document in question and found that what was submitted to the commission on February 13 2026 was only a draft report and not a final decision or approved recommendation.
According to him, the commission itself has clarified publicly that the document does not amount to a reallocation of oil wells and that circulating claims are speculative and do not reflect any final position.
Udom stressed that the ownership of the oil wells has already been settled by the Supreme Court of Nigeria in two separate judgments. He explained that the apex court held that following the October 10 2002 judgment of the International Court of Justice on the Nigeria Cameroon boundary, Cross River lost its estuarine sector and no longer possessed a seaward boundary.
He added that on July 10 2012, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that Cross River was no longer a littoral state entitled to offshore derivation and fully recognised Akwa Ibom’s entitlement to the oil wells.
Udom maintained that no inter agency committee or institutional process can override or reinterpret a subsisting Supreme Court judgment, describing any contrary action as unconstitutional null and void.
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