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Best wishes - Charles Charles Gurdon Menas Associates T: +44-(0)1442-872-800 [log in to unmask] ================== Rulers say Bakassi deal looks creaky 07.11.2003 Traditional rulers in Nigeria's south-eastern province of Cross Rivers have begun rattling their sabres at what they have said is the betrayal of the people of the oil-rich Bakassi Peninsula by the Nigerian state, writes Barry Morgan. The international boundary, extending out into waters claimed by Nigeria, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea, has yet to be demarcated and is politically dependent on the convincing resolution of the onshore territorial tussle. Bakassi is likely to be handed over to Cameroon next May under a bilateral protocol on the disputed border supervised by a Mixed Commission set up by the United Nations. The aim is to ease tensions and implement a ruling in favour of Cameroon by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Based on the ruling, the maritime border extends only 26.5 kilometres out to sea, but must reach further to free the eastern gulf for exploration and production activity. Bakassi monarch Etinyin Edet's accusations were echoed by the locally-elected Federal House Representative Joe Etene, who asked why communities that owe allegiance to Calabar in Cross River should move to francophone Cameroon. Local media quoted Etene as querying Cameroon's human rights record and reflecting that the anglophone people over the border in southern Cameroon are agitating to break out of Cameroon Republic to form their own Republic of Ambazoria. "What if the Bakassi people joined them?" he said. The Mixed Commission met last week to hand Nigerian communities with their land back over to Cameroon and will meet again in Yaounde next month, according to UN sources in Dakar. Edet said his people will never shift from their native land and would resist attempts to make them Cameroonians. "We want to stand by ourselves as a people recognised by the African Charter of Human Rights," he said. One senior source close to the ICJ process commented that since Southern Cameroons was a British Trust Territory before conducting a plebiscite prefiguring its entry into the new Republic of Cameroon, it was therefore prevented from having another bite at the cherry. Both Southern Cameroon separatists and Bakassi activists can only seek limited recourse from the Banjul-based African Charter and the UN Convention of Human Rights.