NIGERIA – CAMEROON RELATIONS SINCE THE ICJ RULING ON THE BAKASSI PENINSULA

NIGERIA – CAMEROON RELATIONS SINCE THE ICJ RULING ON THE BAKASSI PENINSULA 

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BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

Boundaries or border zones in Africa and the inter-state and inter-community relations generated across them have been major sites for the interplay of various social, economic, and political dynamics. Boundaries which mark the geographical limits state, as well as the extent of its sovereignty are also a notable strategic feature of nations’ survival. This explains why nations jealously protect and defend their political frontiers and c1aries. The outcome of this protection in international relations is incessant territorial disputes among nations of the world.[i]

Territorial disputes have been the most common sources of inter-state crises in post-colonial Africa. Since the year 1961, more than half of the member states of the continental body (the OAU now AU), have been involved in at least one territorial dispute.

Looking at Nigeria, for instance, there have been various border disputes with her neighbors. In 1976, The Republic of Benin aimed sovereignty over the village of Shanji in Sokoto State. Cameroon also claimed sovereignty over eighteen villages in the Bakassi Peninsula.2

The relationship between Nigeria and Cameroon, as well as has been marked essentially by mutual and outright alienation. Put differently, with Cameroon has historically been in conflict since both of them attained independence. The reason for the negative experience of age-long hostility is that in the perennial era, and even in the colonial times, a very high percentage of the people and territories that presently constitute Cameroon was part and parcel of administrative state units within the territory of present-day Nigeria.

During the European scramble for Africa, Queen Victoria signed a Treaty of Protection with the King and chiefs of Akwa-Akba, known to Europeans as “Old Calabar”, on 10 September 1884. This enabled the United Kingdom to exercise control over the entire territory around Calabar, including Bakassi. The territory consequently became de facto part of the Republic of Nigeria, although the border was never permanently delineated. However, Documents released by the Cameroonians, partly with that of the British and Germans, clearly place Bakassi under Cameroonian territory as a consequence of colonial-era Anglo-German agreements. Interestingly, even after southern Cameroon voted in 1961 to leave Nigeria and became a part of Cameroon, Bakassi remained under Nigeria until the International Court Justice; judgment of 2002.(3)

Nigeria’s relations with Cameroon since the ICJ judgment over, Bakassi in 2002 have been ‘tenuous’, ‘tentative’, ‘inherently conflictual’ and ‘one. of a continuous encounter with border problematic’.4 Even though the intervention of the ICJ further defined the land, coastal and maritime boundaries between the two countries, their relations with each other has not been very smooth and cordial. Since the ID judgment in 2002, it was found that the existence and intensification of the boundary conflict between the independent successor states of Nigeria and Cameroon were due to incompatible and irreconcilable claims of rights to the Bakassi, incompletely and imprecisely delimited terrain; cross- border activities of over-zealous state security and revenue operatives; the discovery and exploitation of rich hydrocarbon deposits and the frustration experienced by Cameroon over Nigeria’s repeated back-off from freely endorsed bilateral protocols and conventions on the southern section of their common interface. The complete withdrawal of Nigerian civil administration, police, and soldiers from Bakassi through the Green Tree Agreement of 2006 Still could not proffer a lasting solution over the Bakassi issue between Nigeria and Cameroon. This research, therefore, intends to look into the relations between the two countries since the ICJ judgment over the Bakassi, to re-appraise the ICJ ruling and proffer a fair and a sustainable solution to the management of relations between the two neighbours following the ICJ judgment over Bakassi.

Statement of the Problem

The bilateral relations between Nigeria and Cameroon for over a decade, following the International Court of Justice ruling over the Bakassi peninsula in 2002 seem to remain hostile as it was before the dispute over the southern boundary was taken to the International Court of Justice. The Green Tree Agreement of 2006 which could have been the solution to the hostile relations was far from being the way forward. Many Nigerians of Bakassi extraction have faced challenges as a result of the International Court of Justice ruling, because of it resulted in their displacement. There have also been security issues in which the two countries continue to point accusing fingers to each other. Meanwhile, it is Indisputable that the two countries are the most important trading partners in Africa.

          In the light of the above, therefore, this research project intends to account for the lull in bilateral relations between Nigeria and Cameroon since the ICJ judgment over Bakassi.

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