Sam Nuvala Fonkem
8 August 2008
analysis
There is a prevalent and somewhat misleading notion that the legal and diplomatic resolution of the Cameroon-Nigeria conflict over the oil-rich Bakassi Peninsula would guarantee a durable peace and stability in the area. Far from it.
The recent successful Cameroon military exploit that neutralised an armed insurgency in Bakassi by a Nigerian rebel group opposed to the August 14 official handing over of the Peninsula to Cameroon in accordance with the 2002 ruling of the international Court of Justice at the Hague and the Green Tree Accord of 2006, was highly commendable.
It was a good move, but not enough to ensure durable peace and development of the region.The very fact that the so-called Delta Defence and Security Council embarked on armed insurgency in the area only in November 2007 in which more than 20 Cameroon soldiers were killed and irrespective of reports, confirmed in parliament by the Minister of Defence, of illegal arms deals between some elements of the Cameroon army and Nigerian rebels, the details of which have yet to be made public, the Nigerian rebel belligerency is an indication that there is more to the Bakassi problem than meets the eye.
By undermining the Nigerian and Cameroonian governments, the insurgents have inadvertently sent a signal to Yaounde that inter-governmental solution which royally snubs the genuine aspirations and welfare of the people affected by such solutions are destined to fail.
The Bakassi problem is a mild symptom of the broader Southern Cameroon's question, which cannot be merely swept under the carpet by legal and diplomatic expediency but must be resolved by an honest, profound and comprehensive political settlement that should seriously take into account, the historical, cultural and socio-political parameters that have been deliberately ignored by the Cameroonian political class.
The imponderable factor in the Nigerian rebel action in Bakassi is the question as to why a dissident group that is opposed to a territorial settlement with a foreign (neighbouring) country should embark on a guerrilla warfare with that neighbouring country, instead of attacking its home government which entered the agreement in the first place.
If, truly, the contention of the Delta group is the handover of the Peninsula to La République du Cameroun, one would, therefore, expect the rebels to take their own government to task instead of provoking a situation pregnant with international repercussions that could compromise efforts to restore a durable peace.
It would be reasonable to assume that insurgents of the Delta Defence and Security Council are bona fide inhabitants of Bakassi who are vehemently opposed to the idea of being governed by La République du Cameroun. They are truly scared of what they perceive as the brutality of Cameroon gendarmes and their extortionist proclivity.
These fears have been compounded by the fact that the people of Ndian Division in which Bakassi is located have been left to their own devices since the unification of the British Southern Cameroons and the French-administered Cameroon in 1961.
And even after the area began producing oil in the mid 1970s, Bakassi remains the most backward enclave of the nation where the only reward, like the rest of the Southern Cameroons, the rightful owners of the Peninsula, has been the relegation to the status of second-class citizens.
During the early months of the Bakassi border conflict which erupted in late 1993, Nigeria's Nobel laureate for Literature Wole Soyinka suggested the holding of a plebiscite in the area as a means to determine the political aspirations of the inhabitants of Bakassi. Soyinka stopped short of recommending the same solution for the entire Southern Cameroons which at the time was at the early stages of nationalist revival, encapsulated by the emergence of the All Anglophone Conference now known as the Southern Cameroons National Council, SCNC.
It is worthwhile recalling that during the February 11, 1961 plebiscite in which the Southern Cameroons voted to join La République du Cameroun in a federation of two states with equal status, what is now known as the Ndian Division (Kumba Southwest) cast a vote of 2,424 to remain as part of Nigeria as, against 2,227 in favour of joining French Cameroon.
Their deep-seated suspicion and distrust of the Francophone style of governance was, and remains unmitigated by irredentist colonial sentiments.The feelings of nationhood are not born out of mere cartographic configurations, national flags and anthems, legal and diplomatic mastery, but by a sense of belonging arising from the establishment of a level political landscape of equal opportunity, fairness, justice and above all the freedom of self-determination.
The lopsided pattern of unbalanced development, the unmitigated quest for wealth accumulation by political predators and greedy bureaucrats who do not in anyway represent the interest of the citizenry, have all contributed to the alienation of the vital components of society.
And the Bakassi region stands out as naked evidence of gross socio-economic injustice. This sorry state of affairs inevitably leads to the radicalisation of the active forces of every society which ignores the principles of good governance. The Nigerian daily newspaper This Day of July 9 has a very instructive anecdote that illustrates this radicalisation process.
The story goes that when the late Nigerian Head of State, General Sani Abacha, had invited some Ijaw youths of the Delta region of Nigeria to Abuja to participate in the three million-man march meant to drum support for his bid to transform himself from a military to a civilian ruler.
There, the youths saw how Abuja had been transformed into what they saw as small London or America and suddenly realised how backward and desolate the Delta region, the source of Nigeria's formidable oil wealth, was. When they returned to their region, they rearranged themselves, held conferences and issued a declaration in which they advanced 100 reasons why the government and the oil companies could not continue to ignore their region.
They also issued an ultimatum to the oil companies to either do something or more out of the region.Instead of the government inviting them to the negotiating table, it drafted Federal troops to the area in November 1998, vandalised and looted the villages, shot and maimed thousands of people.
The government in the long run realised the futility of this policy of extermination and while it did not completely abandon its strong arm tactics, it all the same introduced a policy of derivation whereby 13 percent of oil proceeds were to be ploughed back for the development of the region.
That figure is said to have been revised upward to 50 percent except that the mechanisms established to ensure that the benefit trickles down to the grassroots, have woefully failed in their mission, hence the continued atmosphere of tension and conflict in the oil producing areas characterised by the kidnapping of oil company personnel and the disruption of pipelines.
It is up to the Cameroon government to learn from the Nigerian experience and to be conscious of the fact that any attempt to bring peace and stability in the Bakassi region must be backed by meaningful developmental projects within the framework of a derivation policy which so far has been restricted to timber producing areas.
Should government fail to do that, then it should not be surprised to witness the escalation of insurgency.
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