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Charles Gurdon
Menas Associates
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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.