The Director-General of the National Boundary Commission in Nigeria, Mr Adamu Adaji, has restated the commitment of the Commission to resolve boundary disputes
Speaking on Voice of Nigeria’s weekly programme “In The News,” the Director-General responded to allegations that the Commission favoured some States over others
He reiterated that the Commission is committed to transparency in delivering its mandate.
Mr Adaji disclosed that some States refused to cooperate with the Commission in addressing boundary issues, stressing that the Commission had resolved to carry on with interested State governments and the Federal government which involves the Vice President, the Minister of Works and the Commission.
According to Adaji, the Commission does not employ biases in delivering on its mandate, rather the National Boundary Commission works with the State Boundary Committees and Local Government Boundary Committees in bringing sustainable resolution to the affected parties.
“The workings of the Commission at the federal level with the State Governments are transparent. The field exercises are undertaken jointly by the experts of the Federal Government (which is neutral as no member of the contesting states participate in the field team) and the affected states including representatives of the affected local government areas and the communities.
“Whatever outcome we get is brought to the meetings of officials that encompass all the affected States and the Federal governments which are led by the Chairmen of the State Boundary Committees which are the Deputy Governors. Whatever we do is based on valid documents and very tedious and accurate field exercises undertaken by experts of parties concerned and discussions are done openly in any of the States or the Federal Capital Territory.”
On the current state of the boundaries inherited from the colonial period, Mr Adaji revealed that some of the conflict-boundary areas had not been resolved due to vague documents and the Commission was adopting new measures to ensure that the people see the essence of boundaries.
“They are not quite clear and some people take advantage of that non-clarity to lay claims. However, we are beginning to harmonise these views by the border communities in conjunction with the documents we inherited so that we can clearly define the boundaries.
“So far, we are making progress on the boundaries we inherited and we are beginning to define these boundaries in a more scientific and modern ways of getting the coordinates which are supposed to show exactly where these pillars are and we’ll document them so that it can replace the colonial documents we’ve been relying on over time,” he said.
Mr Adaji added that the Nigerian government was focused on establishing administrative boundaries which emanated from states created over the years and what was inherited from the colonial masters.
The National Boundary Commission boss noted that there had been disagreements on resources along boundary corridors and that the commission had been trying to see how the government could take policy decisions to border resources and ensure that they were co-owned by the affected States, local governments and communities.
Commenting on Nigeria’s relations with her neighbouring countries, Mr Adaji said Nigeria shares land boundaries with Chad, Cameroon, Niger Republic, Benin Republic and maritime boundaries with Equatorial Guinea, São Tomé and Principe, and Ghana.
He added that Nigeria had been piloting peaceful co-existence with her neighbours and progress had been recorded, especially with Cameroon, Niger Republic and Republic of Benin boundaries.
PIAK
