Tony Eluemunor
16 August 2008
Lagos — Shortly before 1 p.m. last Thursday, the Nigerian national anthem sounded at the Perigrino Hall inside the Cross River state Government House, Calabar, to signal the conclusion of the Greentree Agreement between the country and Cameroon.
But not many Nigerians present could sing along for the mood was decidedly dull as though the nation was mourning. Yes, it was mourning the loss of the Bakassi peninsula, a 100,000 square kilometre of what used to be part of Nigerian territory.
It was also a bona fide local government area (LGA); so now Nigeria is left with 773 LGAs, instead of the 774 listed in the constitution.
Prof Kingsley Macebuh, who used to teach theoretical politics at City College, New York, but who is now in charge of research and media relations for the Republican Party of Nigeria, who could not bear watching the ceremony live on television, called me and asked a lot of questions -- Is Bakassi not part of the Nigerian constitution?
Did President Obasanjo and now Yar'Adua, who approved the ceding of Bakassi, not swear to uphold that same constitution?
Do Nigerians understand what a constitution is? And what about those who framed the constitution in the late 1990s; did they not know that by then Bakassi ownership was in dispute?
Should Nigeria not have gone to any length to defend that constitution? Or should a national constitution be disregarded that casually? Of course, Macebuh was not just discussing the academic semantics of the sanctity of national constitutions, their powers, limits and potency; he was plain angry at his country's loss of even an inch of soil to another country.
Such anger was expressed everywhere as well -- in newspaper opinion pages, in radio talk shows and television discussions.
National tragedy
Rose Agwajinya, a primary school teacher, called it a "a national tragedy, a day I never thought I would ever see -- where Nigeria would act as though she had lost a war and was parcelling out its land to the victor".
Everywhere, it was a humbling experience; it was as though Cameroon had defeated Nigeria in a contest more strategic than football. Gone were the show of power which the presence of the Nigerian military in the disputed region had signified for 15 years.
In fact, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) had threatened that the handover ceremonies originally scheduled to take place in Abana in New Bakassi, where people in the affected area would be resettled, would not hold as it had vowed to prevent it.
Even though the Nigerian military had its well-armed soldiers lining the route from Calabar to Abana, and stopped and searched vehicles after every 5km, precaution made the organisers slate the ceremony for the safety of Calabar.
Nigeria's attorney-general and minister of Justice, Michael Aondoakaa, who signed the handover notes for his country, said that although it was painful to surrender a piece of Nigerian soil, the nation had international responsibilities to meet -- to promote international peace and cooperation as well as advance the cause of "African brotherhood and good neighbourliness".
The rule of law
He said the event was President Umaru Yar'Adua's challenge to African leaders; that if they upheld the rule of law, peace would reign in Africa.
Even as he said this, some residents of Bakassi present at the ceremony struggled to suppress tears from flooding their faces. Back in the affected area, the people had declared 14-day mourning -- half of it before the handing-over date, and half after.
One of those affected, Paul Epko, is a candidate for the governorship bye-election scheduled for August 23. He would still contest on the All Nigeria People's Party ticket because the Greentree Agreement reached between the two countries after the judgment, allows the people there to live in the territory still as Nigerians for five years, after which they will decide where to belong.
Many of them are opting to remain in Nigeria. To accommodate them, Nigeria is building a New Bakassi for them in Anang. But as the king of Bakassi said after the ceremony, "although some of the buildings have been completed, one would have thought that all the buildings would have been completed by now."
The resettlement project started immediately Nigeria lost the territory via a verdict of the International Court of Justice at The Hague, in which Cameroon instituted the border demarcation case after a bloody clash between their soldiers in 1994. Then, Gen Sani Abacha was in power.
When the British high commissioner in Nigeria sent him a confidential letter that Nigeria had a bad case there, the irascible Abacha made the letter public and warned the British to desist from such provocative interventions in Nigeria's internal affairs.
He also announced that Nigeria was ready to go to war over Bakassi, and then he created the Bakassi LGA.
Immediately, Cameroon rushed to the ICJ as evidence that Nigeria had no political administration there up till then. He put together a team of top-flight lawyers to represent Nigeria.
At the country's first appearance on June 14, 1994, the court's registrar, Edwado Valencia Espina, explained that Nigeria had violated the normal procedure by not having its attorney -general as head representative.
From there it only became messier and messier for Nigeria. Lawyers were frequently changed as it became an avenue of rewarding friendly ones through the payment of hefty legal fees. It is said that legal fees alone cost Nigeria $300 million (Sh20 billion).
With the return to civil rule in Nigeria, Obasajo priced the diplomatic option over and above the legal one, just as the military President Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida had done.
Babangida was ready to compensate Cameroon monetarily. Then Sampson Doe, who held joint Nigerian-Cameroonian citizenship, forwarded heaps of literature on Bakassi to the Nigerian authorities.
His plan was that southern Cameroon could resurrect in court its case against the French, invoking a process called the "Tomlin Order", and then Nigeria could negotiate the case.
Southern Cameroon, the part Britain ceded to Germany in 1931 and was later seized and administered as being under the League of Nations trusteeship by Britain after the Second World War, Obasanjo embraced the idea but was talked out of it by acting attorney-general Musa Elaho, who convinced the president that he had a put together a good legal team. The rest, as they say, is history.
A long history
The Bakassi issue has a long history. It had remained in the back burner until the 1979-83 Shehu Shagari civilian administration, which looked into the Maroua Declaration which the 1966-75 Yakubu Gowon administration had signed with Cameroon in June 1975.
Gowon was in Cameroon from May 30 to June 1 and signed the territory away at the end of his visit. By June 29, he was overthrown in a coup which ushered in Gen Murtala Muhammed's regime.
Cameroon was simply lucky that Gowon had already signed that piece of paper, for immediately the first opportunity presented itself, the impetuous Mohammed repudiated the agreement, arguing that it was not ratified by the Supreme Military Council, which served as the nation's law-making organ.
The Buhari-Idiagnon government of 1984-85 also repudiated the Gowon-Ahmadu Ahidjo pact, but said that Nigeria would never go to war against Cameroon, and that the matter would be negotiated amicably.
It was after the armed clash between the two countries during Abacha's regime that Cameroon went to court to seek a legal settlement, and won a decisive victory. There are two resettlement centres for the returnees for now.
Some 5,000 people are at one in Ikang, where 12 new babies have been born so far. Everything -- accommodation, food, water, drugs and the rest -- are in shor supply.
All the 5,000 returnees share 40 toilets. For now, all of them are still in a temporary resettlement centre, while the permanent one, New Bakassi, is still under construction.
Bassey Ita Edet, the president of the Bakassi People's General Assembly, cast a gaze round the Iknag camp and shook his head despondently.
Then he said his people had sworn to continue protesting against the decision to cede Bakassi to Cameroon and move more than "260,000 people to a new settlement without considering their traditional institutions, their deities, shrines and graves, including their dignity".
But at Ikang, dignity was in short supply. Not even little children could be seen playing. People said they slept in the open and, with the effective Cameroonian control of the old Bakassi, an influx of more refugees is expected, although under the Greentree Agreement, Nigerians will be allowed to live in the peninsula as Nigerians for five years.
Yet, the handover may signal another round of tension between Nigerian and Cameroonian forces. For instance, the Nigerian navy is disturbed that, although the pact allows free movement of civilian vessels through the disputed area, Nigerian naval ships are banned from it.
This closes to the navy the only channel to the Atlantic Ocean from Calabar, which the peninsula once afforded. And it effectively cuts off the entire Nigerian Eastern Command from the ocean.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 The Nation. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
