Despite a subsisting Supreme Court judgment that affirmed Akwa Ibom State’s status as a littoral state, fresh concerns have emerged over indications that the Federal Government may be taking steps that could favour Cross River State in the allocation of disputed oil wells.
At the centre of the controversy are 76 offshore oil wells whose ownership has remained a source of tension between Akwa Ibom and Cross River states for more than a decade. Akwa Ibom maintains that the wells fall squarely within its maritime boundaries, a position upheld by the Supreme Court in a landmark ruling delivered in July 2012.
In that judgment, the apex court held that Cross River State, having lost its littoral status following the ceding of the Bakassi Peninsula to Cameroon, could not lay claim to offshore oil wells, as it no longer possessed a maritime boundary. The ruling was widely regarded as final and binding, effectively settling the dispute in favour of Akwa Ibom.
However, despite the judgment, Cross River has continued to assert ownership of the oil wells, prompting renewed federal intervention. Recent developments have raised fears in Akwa Ibom that ongoing administrative processes at the federal level could be used to reallocate the oil assets in a manner that undermines the Supreme Court’s decision.
In what the Federal Government describes as an effort to resolve long-standing boundary and ownership disputes, it has commenced a nationwide exercise to verify and plot the coordinates of disputed and newly drilled oil wells. The initiative, which began on Monday, is being coordinated by the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) at the request of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC).
The mapping exercise is intended to conclusively determine the ownership of oil and gas assets in line with constitutional provisions governing derivation revenue, particularly in areas where overlapping claims by states have persisted for years, including Akwa Ibom and Cross River.
RMAFC says it set up an Inter-Agency Technical Committee in September 2025 to carry out the task. The committee includes representatives from the National Boundary Commission, the Office of the Surveyor-General of the Federation and NUPRC, working alongside surveyors-general from the affected states.
According to the chairman of RMAFC, Mohammed Bello Shehu, extensive fieldwork was conducted between September 2025 and January 2026 across several oil-producing states, including Akwa Ibom and Cross River, as well as offshore locations. He said the exercise was a constitutional necessity to ensure that states receive the correct 13 per cent derivation revenue from oil and gas produced within their territories.
While federal officials insist the process is neutral and data-driven, critics in Akwa Ibom argue that any outcome that reallocates offshore oil wells to Cross River would amount to an administrative reversal of a settled Supreme Court judgment, raising broader questions about the sanctity of judicial decisions and federal-state relations in Nigeria’s oil-producing regions.
The outcome of the verification exercise is expected to shape future derivation payments and could either ease or further inflame tensions between the two neighbouring states, depending on how closely it aligns with existing legal rulings.
