Background
Prince Bassey Edet Otu was born on 18 October 1959. He grew up in his home city of Calabar and in Jos, Plateau State, where his father had been assigned to the mission of the Church of Scotland.
politician Member of the Senate of Nigeria
Prince Bassey Edet Otu was born on 18 October 1959. He grew up in his home city of Calabar and in Jos, Plateau State, where his father had been assigned to the mission of the Church of Scotland.
He was elected for Cross River South in the April 2011 elections, running on the People"s Democratic Party (PDP) platform. He obtained a bachelor"s degree in Social Sciences from the University of Calabar. Before entering politics, he was engaged in banking and then in the petroleum sector.
He also dabbles in farming.
In a 2007 interview, he said the ruling by an international court that the Bakassi peninsula belonged to Cameroon was wrong, but that the job now was to resettle displaced relatives of Nigerians and move on. Otu was Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Petroleum Resources (Upstream).
In this role, he led work on a draft amendment bill that would reposition the Petroleum Technology Development Fund as a more effective vehicle to develop local content in the oil and gas industry. In the PDP primary elections for the Cross River South senate seat, Otu beat the serving senator, Bassey Ewa Henshaw to become the party"s candidate.
In the April elections, he polled 112,144 votes, ahead of runner-up Professor Eyo Etim Nyong of the Action Congress of Nigeria, who polled 19,378 votes.
Otu was elected a Member of House of Representatives in April 2003 and reelected in April 2007. In the 2007-2011 House, he was a member of committees on Power, Ministry of Niger Delta, Inter-Parliamentary Relations, Inter-Intra Party Relations, Environment and Defence.