According to the group, the aim of the realignment is to bring communities into Ijaw settlements that are oil-bearing communities.
INC said that claims that Akwa Ibom has no map hence the need to draw a map by the state government were a ploy to realign settlements in the state to bring communities into Ijaw settlements who are oil-bearing communities.
Prof. Benjamin Okaba, President of INC, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that Ijaws across the Niger Delta region were being mobilised to halt plans to further marginalise them in Akwa Ibom.
Okaba regretted that some interest groups who are not comfortable with the natural endowments of oil and gas in Ijaw settlements in Akwa Ibom, want to use government machinery to distort Ijaw settlements and create boundary crises.
He explained that mapping and boundary adjustments were clearly the roles of the Federal Government, the Surveyor General of the Federation and the National Boundary Commission, respectively.
“It is laughable that people are claiming that the state of Akwa Ibom created some 35 years ago has no map, when the major requirement for state creation is a map.
“How then did the constituencies delineation take place if there is no map, on what basis does Akwa Ibom get its revenue from the federation account?
“The state of Akwa Ibom also won cases bordering on oil wells with neighbouring states at the Supreme Court and the map of the state tendered as evidence formed the basis of the verdict and the maps are still in the records,” Okaba said.
He said that INC would take every necessary step to support and protect the economic interest of Ijaws in Akwa Ibom in their quest to benefit from the three per cent host community fund in the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA).
He urged the state government to comply with a subsisting court judgment in favour of the Ijaw communities and jettison the idea in the interest of peace.