The agreement on Bakassi
By Sun News
Sunday, June 18, 2006

Nigeria has just signed an agreement to hand the disputed oil rich Bakassi Peninsula in Cross River State to Cameroon. The agreement, referred to as the Greentree Accord, was signed by President Olusegun Obasanjo and Cameroon’s President, Paul Biya, at the fifth tripartite meeting of the Nigeria- Cameroon Mixed Commission brokered by the United Nations Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, in New York. It provides for Nigeria’s withdrawal of its 2000 troops from the disputed territory within the next 60 days with a possible extension of additional 30 days at the discretion of Annan, if there are problems with the withdrawal.

The Nigerian population in Bakassi, according to Annan, who announced the development, have the option to either remain in Bakassi under Cameroonian authority or be resettled in Nigeria. Transitional administration arrangements, including the presence of Nigerian civil servants in the area, are expected to be concluded within two years. The decision was communicated to Nigerians by Obasanjo through a national broadcast last Thursday.

Nigeria’s decision to hand the coveted 1, 000 square kilometer-patch of Atlantic coastal swamp known as Bakassi to Cameroon is a major step in the resolution of the long-running dispute between the two countries which culminated in a ruling in favour of Cameroon by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in the Netherlands, in 2002. Nigeria had been due to hand Bakassi over to Cameroon in September 2004 but failed to do so, citing “technical difficulties.”

The ICJ, in the 2002 ruling, awarded Bakassi to Cameroon based, largely, on a 1913 treaty between former colonial powers, Britain and Germany. The disputed area, before Nigeria and Cameroon gained independence in 1960, had been variously under German, British and French rule.
However, Nigeria’s agreement to finnally cede Bakassi, ostensibly in deference to the ICJ ruling and to avoid a military conflict, appears not to have taken into adequate consideration the position of the Bakassi indigenes.

The indigenes, apparently caught off guard by the new development, are, through the Chairman of the Bakassi Council of Traditional Rulers and Paramount Ruler of the area, Etiyin Etim Edet Okon, insisting on their Nigerian citizenship and have vowed not to vacate their ancestral home, even as they make it difficult for Cameroon to take over the peninsula.
As persuasive as Nigeria’s excuse of a preference for an avoidance of military conflict in the resolution of the Bakassi problem is, we do not think that the government has handled the issue of the fate of the indigenes as well as it could.

The idea that a people can be physically removed from their homelands, especially one at the edge of Atlantic, through which they earn their living as fishermen, without their full agreement, is not only impertinent, it is preposterous. The option of remaining in Bakassi as Nigerians resident in Cameroon also offered to them leaves them with no political base, either in Nigeria or Cameroon. They will be outright aliens in Cameroon, and just a little better than aliens in Nigeria, because they will have no constituency or platform to aspire to any political office in the country.

Given that Nigeria’s lacklustre handling of the territorial dispute culminated in its ending up at the ICJ where Nigeria lost out, the fact of our loss of Bakassi to Cameroon has become a fait accompli. But the manner of implementation of Nigeria’s concession of Bakassi, as agreed to by Nigeria in the Greentree Accord, cannot guarantee a peaceful or creditable denouement.

What we expect Nigeria to do at this time is to work assiduously towards a political resolution of the manner of hand over of Bakassi to Cameroon. Nigeria and Cameroon need to discuss, in the spirit of African brotherhood, and arrive at a solution which will not force the Nigerians in Bakassi out of their homeland, conscript them into a forced, and also fake Cameroonian citizenship or make them aliens in Nigeria.

An agreement should be worked out which will allow Nigerians in Bakassi to continue to live in Bakassi, as Nigerian citizens, under a Nigerian administration. President Obasanjo and Biya may have to agree on certain boundary delineations, as expedient, without stretching the legal arguments of the ICJ ruling and the Greentree Accord.