INTRODUCTION

On November 13, 2007,  an unprovoked  attack on the Bakassi Peninsula by some "unknown" Nigerian militants in Nigerian military uniform occurred, killing as many as 21  Cameroonian gendarmes (soldiers).  A retaliatory killing of some 10 Nigerians in the Peninsula was reported soon thereafter.  On November 22, a resolution of the Nigerian Senate repudiating former President Obasanjo's handover of Bakassi to Cameroon was approved.  Nigerian troop withdrawal began August 1, and ended August 14 2006.

All of these actions amount to a re-opening of the Cameroon-Nigeria ICJ ruling of October 10, 2002 and official final handover on August 14, 2006 after the Green Tree (New York) Accord of June 12, 2006.  [See Appendices I - III]  The reprisal by Cameroon threatens some kind of serious conflict - which could lead to war -  which is totally unnecessary between our two neighboring African countries of Nigeria and Cameroon.

Some passion is once again being shown by Nigerians of various walks of life in various commentaries, in the media, in Cyberspace and Blogosphere. Some of the interlocutors on the side against the ICJ judgement, troop withdrawal and Bakassi handover  have reduced the discussion into a contest between galloping nationalism and patriotism on the one hand,  and abysmal cowardice and lack of patriotism on the other hand.

For me, it is a contest between local politics "4-1-9" and naivety on the one hand,  and pragmatic wisdom in international politics on the other hand.

The new Senate resolution and various Nigerians have for example cited the presence of the name "Bakassi" in the 1999 Nigerian Constitution and the need to have constitutional sanction to any boundary adjustment as grounds for repudiation of the ICJ ruling.

First, I wish to let readers know that Bakassi was NEVER mentioned in the 1979 Constitution, but it indeed  turned up in the 1999 Constitution.    If we inspect Schedule 1, Part 1 and Section 3 of the two Constitutions (1979, 1999), we will find that the name "Bakassi" was missing in 1979.   However,  the Cameroon-Nigeria legal tangle began in 1993, and came before the ICJ for the first time in 1994 ! Despite that glaring fact,  our sabre-rattling "nationalists" are averting their eyes to it.  Secondly, it has been rightly argued that in any case, the longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates of  "Bakassi" are missing in ANY of the Constitutions, and hence the "facile" obedience to the 1999 Constitution (that is number 768 and names of LGs) has now been effected by carving out the new Bakassi LG from the existing Akpabuyo LG of Cross Rivers State.

Thirdly, no bill was brought before the National Assembly requiring this ingenious move: the wording of  Section 8 in the Constitution about state and LG boundary adjustments actually does not require any such bill, ONLY that if a bill is brought, this-and-that is how it should be passed. So no part of the Constitution was violated. 
 
The section 8 of the 1999 Constitution quoted states that:
 
QUOTE
 
A bill for a Law of House of Assembly for the purpose of boundary adjustment of any existing local government area shall only be passed if...
 
UNQUOTE


If the section had read that:
 
QUOTE
 
No boundary adjustment of any existing local government shall be made WITHOUT a bill before the House of Assembly.
 
A bill for a Law of House of Assembly for the purpose of boundary adjustment of any existing local government area shall only be passed  if.....
 
UNQUOTE
 
then there might have been a violation IF and ONLY IF a bill was proposed to move Bakassi's boundary.  Where is the bill?   So how was this section violated? 

In any case,  why are we so bothered about the loss of Bakassi WITHOUT a constitutional amendment or parliamentary approval, and yet are not talking about the GAIN of Cameroonian territory in the Adamawa/Lake Chad region?  Why the double standard?  

It is trite to remark that Nigeria has a right to include Bakassi in its Constitution at any time - it has a right to even include ANY local government named TEXAS in its Constitution.  However,  it will amount to a constitutional 4-1-9 IF that insertion is USED to make ANY LATER justification before an international court.   We should be ASHAMED of ourselves if we do not acknowledge the INDECENCY and ODIUM of such an a-posteriori action.  It is like criminalizing an act after a  fact, and then going back to jail a person for violating it. 

It is odious to law, very Abacha-ic.

Case closed....but of course not for some Nigerians ! :-)

THE AKINJIDE ANGLE


Lawyer Chief Richard Akinjide (and I might add Chief Bola Ajibola, who was ad-hoc Judge on the case, and Prof. Itse Sagay, who was NOT on the case at all, and should have been) has ABSOLUTELY little leg to stand on in talking about this Bakassi case that he and others took on behalf of Nigeria and lost badly.   The fact of the matter is that Nigeria had breached international law in assuming Bakassi as being part of Nigeria; the case was intrinsically weak; the reliefs sought were unacceptable; the persuasiveness of our lawyers was weak; and finally case law and precedence were against us.


Akinjide's current major plank of protest in hailing the latest Senate resolution is that the ICJ judges were tainted, primarily that the French Judge and the British Judge were biased against Nigeria due to the political considerations of their native countries of France and the UK .   Granted that a recent (2004) study indicates that there is evidence that 85-90% of ICJ cases involving their own countries' are supported by the judges - ostensibly because they are usually staunch members of their government's establishments - Akinjide  forgets to tell us that the Court consisted of 15 judges elected to nine-year terms by the UN General Assembly and Security Council and 2 adhoc judges that must survive the lifetime of the Cameroon-Nigeria case. Akinjide forgets to remind us that the case was deliberated before the ICJ for EIGHT solid YEARS - from  March 29, 1994, (as amended on June 6, 1994) to October 10, 2002, with an intermediate ruling (over Nigeria's eight objections) on June 11, 1998 that the ICJ had jurisdiction ! If we cannot accept a judgement after an eight-year-long case, how can we accept Akinjide's INSTANT 12-is-2/3rd-of-19 argument of 1979 before the Supreme Court in connection with the Shagari/Awolowo presidential petition?


Moving on before we derail on Akinjide's 1979 "howler"....

In that 1998 ICJ ruling on jurisdiction, Akinjide forgets to tell us that (See Appendix I):

QUOTE

- By 14 votes to 3, the Court rejected Nigeria's first objection that the Court has no jurisdiction to entertain Cameroon's Application....
- By 16 votes to 1, the Court rejected Nigeria's second objection that for many years prior to the filing of the Application, Cameroon and Nigeria had in their regular dealings accepted a duty to settle all boundary questions exclusively through the existing bilateral machinery.....
- By 15 votes to 2, the Court rejected Nigeria's third objection that the settlement of boundary disputes within the Lake Chad region is subject to the exclusive competence of the Lake Chad Basin Commission.....
- By 13 votes to 4, the Court rejected Nigeria's fourth objection that the Court should not in these proceedings determine the boundary in Lake Chad to the extent that that boundary constitutes or is constituted by the tripoint in Lake Chad where the frontiers of Cameroon, Chad and Nigeria meet, because it directly affects the Republic of Chad, a third party......
-By 13 votes to 4, the Court rejected Nigeria's fifth objection that there is no dispute concerning boundary delimitation as such throughout the whole length of the boundary from the tripoint in Lake Chad to the sea, subject, within Lake Chad, to the question of the title over Darak and adjacent islands, and without prejudice to the title over the Bakassi Peninsula.....
- By 15 votes to 2, the Court rejected Nigeria's sixth objection that there is no basis for a judicial determination that Nigeria bears international responsibility for alleged frontier incursions, because the material submitted by Cameroon is insufficient in order to enable it to defend itself and to enable the Court to make a fair judicial determination of the legal issues before it.....
- By 12 votes to 5, the Court rejected Nigeria's seventh objection that there is no legal dispute concerning delimitation of the maritime boundary between Cameroon and Nigeria which is at the present time appropriate for resolution by the Court, because no maritime boundary determination is possible prior to the determination of title over the Bakassi Peninsula and, in any event, bilateral negotiations to effect a delimitation by agreement have not taken place.....
- Finally, by 12 votes to 5, the Court declared that Nigeria's eighth objection does not have, in the circumstances of the case, an exclusively preliminary character. According to that objection, the question of maritime delimitation necessarily involves, beyond a point that is some 17 nautical miles from the coast, the rights and interests of third states, and that Cameroon's Application is to that extent inadmissible.....

UNQUOTE



Without looking at who voted what, one can be sure that Ajibola sided with Nigeria in all of the above objections !  Nevertheless,  from the above, it appears to me  that the case was already overwhelmingly lost as far back as 1998!

Anyway, concerning the October 10, 2002 final (and unappealable)  ruling, Akinjide forgets to tell us that the  17-person composition of the Court (with country and expiration date on February of the stated year) was as follows (See Appendix II):

President Gilbert Guillaume (France; 2009); Vice-President Shi Jiuyong (China; 2003); Judges Shigeru Oda (Japan; 2003), Raymond Ranjeva (Madagascar; 2009), Geza Herczegh (Hungary; 2003), Carl-August Fleischhauer (Germany; 2003), Abdul G. Koroma (Sierra Leone; 2003), Rosalyn Higgins (UK; 2009), Gonzalo Parra-Aranguren (Venezuela; 2009), Pieter H. Kooijmans (Netherlands; 2006), José Francisc Rezek (Brazil; 2006), Awn Shawkat Al-Khasawneh (Jordan; 2009), Thomas  Buergenthal (USA; 2006), Nabil Elaraby (Egypt; 2006); Judges ad hoc Keba Mbaye (Senegal; died January 11, 2007) , Bola Ajibola (Nigeria); Registrar Phillipe Couvreur (Belgium; since February 2000; re-elected February 2007).

Since the Judgement was on October 10, 2002 - and since the Cameroon-Nigeria case was over an eight-year period, and the term of the regular (non-adhoc) judges was nine years -  what the above expiration dates show is that EVERY one of the judges  was  present from the beginning of the case to the very end, and must have been quite familiar with it!

For our information, ONLY the two Judges

- Judge Koroma (Sierra Leone) and Judge  ad hoc Ajibola (of Nigeria) appended dissenting opinions to the Judgment of the Court;
with

-Judges Oda, Herczegh and Rezek appending separate declarations to the Judgment of the Court;

- Judges Ranjeva, Parra-Aranguren, and Al-Khasawneh and Judge ad hoc Mbaye appending separate opinions to the Judgment of the Court;

So, these other 13 judges (in addition to Frenchman Gillaume and Englishwoman Higgins), all from different countries,  were not exactly robots.

And if Nigeria was so worried about a Britishwoman on the Bench, how come we had SO MANY British people on our own legal and advisory team?  Come with me here as we look at the document in Appendix 4:   The Federal Republic of Nigeria was represented on the ICJ case as follows by about 49 persons - agents, co-agents, counsels and advocates, political, diplomatic, scientific and technical advisors, administrators and media officers.  Of this number, at least 21 - or just under half - are full British citizens !
 
See?   ! Is it then NOT possible, going by Akinjide's argument, that these BRITISH lawyers and advise,rs MESSED up our case in collusion with Judges Guillaume and Higgins? Could they not have been passing information to MI5, or to the French side?

These are rhetorical questions, of course, so let us leave the ridiculous for the sublime, and deal with what we know for sure.


EPILOGUE

Let us also kindly leave sabre-rattling alone, and leave the prospects of war out of the  Bakassi affair.  Bakassi belongs to Cameroon for the forseeable future, and our National Parliament might wish to do Nigerians and Cameroonians a big favor by "ratifying all the ratifiables" a posteriori to satisfy their constitutional consciences so that these kinds of angst don't keep recurring among our gentle peoples. 

I considered it a strategic error for the Government of Nigeria to have ordered the EVACUATION of  people from Bakassi who considered themselves Nigerians, for otherwise we would later have had more leverage in requesting for a referendum among the people there to determine what country they want to be in. We can however still continue to press for a referendum.  As it is, let us insist that those still in Bakassi who consider themselves Nigerians should be treated with respect and human dignity according to international law, and in accordance with the Green Tree Accord..

Also, in the time being, let us FULLY settle those evacuated into the new Bakassi LG carved out of the old Akpabuyo LG of Cross Rivers State. 


In case my above advice is not considered sufficiently "patriotic" or "nationalistic", then let somebody sue somebody else all the way to our Supreme Court.  Let that apex body rule - and let us take it from there.
 
I believe that I know what the answer will be, but obviously some of us Nigerians want to be HIT with OUR correct judgement before we listen.  So be it.

Finally, we should stop quoting examples of one country or the other that has not implemented an ICJ judgement.  While a recent report talks of a low 61% compliance rate of ICJ rulings, another gives the outright rejection rate as being nearer 5%, the difference between the time taken for various countries to ultimately comply with the judgements, taking into consideration their varying political environments. Cases of the USA, Israel and Iran non-compliance and/or rejection come to mind. I wince at the specter of following bad example rather than good ones, and wonder when these states became EXEMPLARS of good international diplomatic behavior, "gold standards".

I certainly do not ask my children to follow bad examples, but good ones.

I rest my case.

APPENDIX I

http://www.asil.org/insights/insigh19.htm


International Court of Justice Upholds its Jurisdiction in Case Brought by Cameroon Against Nigeria
By Peter H.F. Bekker, Ph.D.
June 1998

APPENDIX III

http://www.nigerianmuse.com/important_documents/?u=Greentree_accord_between_Nigeria_and_Cameroon_June_12_2006.htm&PHPSESSID=04584553cbc2402f7b55159bb4b6a83f Greentree Accord to Reinforce ICJ Verdict
Full text of the agreement signed in New York on June 12, 2006.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Robot  Villager

# 1 On November 13, 2007, an unprovoked attack on the Bakassi Peninsula by some "unk...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 26.11.2007 00:06

Exxcuzme  Villager

# 2 Sir, This is all legalese. I do not agree. The 419 World Court, Objoke govt and the Cameroon corrupt govt are all concern about the oil in that region. Noone cares about the people of Bakassi. I do not know why some of them would agree to be relocated out of their accestrial homes. F all the 419 govts. If the World court says you should be relocated out of your ancestrial home, sir, I do not think you will say let peace rain. What we have here are illegal bodies that do not care about people but are only concern of milking human sufferings, especially when they are dark skin people of the world.:mad: Posted by Exxcuzme| 26.11.2007 09:01

Palamedes  Villager

# 3 For me, it is a contest between local politics "4-1-9" and naivety on the one hand, and pragmatic wisdom in international politics on the other hand. Sir, with great respect, it is rather revolting to decorum to reference all those who (might) disagree with your position as naive or “4-1-9” --whatever that means in this context. First, I wish to let readers know that Bakassi was NEVER mentioned in the 1979 Constitution, but it indeed turned up in the 1999 Constitution. If we inspect Schedule 1, Part 1 and Section 3 of the two Constitutions (1979, 1999), we will find that the name "Bakassi" was missing in 1979. Sir, but what is the point of the aforementioned paragraph? Should Bakassi be disqualified from being mentioned in 1999 because it was not mentioned in 1979. How astonishing that a large part of your argument for the ICJ rulings depends on this rather 'empty' paragraph. No boundary adjustment of any existing local government shall be made WITHOUT a bill before the House of Assembly. Your preferred wording is already (albeit implicitly) made in 8(4) of the 1999 Constitution. If we turn the wording of 8(4) round, that is to say, the constitution implicitly confer on the HoA the responsibility for deciding upon any boundary adjustment of any existing local government area. This is equivalent to your “No boundary adjustment of any existing local government shall be made WITHOUT a bill before the House of Assembly”. I therefore don't see what is so radical about your preferred wording except to spell out 8(4) explicitly in very elementary terms. In any case, Chief Richard Akinjide (SAN), the former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice should be ashamed of himself. I have always argued that it was a VERY stupid decision to go to the ICoJ. And the Senate should hold fast and reject the judgement. I am for the unification of West Africa, but also a Nigerian. However, my argument is two-fold: (1) Cameroon land-per-person is 27sq km whereas it is 6sq km in Nigeria. Pray, sir, why it is wisdom for a country to grant a part of its land to another that has 4 to 5 times more. (2) Whatever arrangements the British made with the Germans during their occupations of Nigeria and Cameroon should have been ignored. Neither of them had any mandate nor were elected by Nigerians or Cameroonians to manage their affairs; why then did the likes of Chief Richard Akinjide not advice against going to ICJ? How could any above average lawyer ever overlook this very salient point? Posted by Palamedes| 26.11.2007 11:50

ALORAINIDDEVIL  Villager

# 4 Sir, I am sorry to say this, what you just wrote is Nonsense. If your Village or OBJ’s Village is in the boundary between Benin and Nigeria? Will you agree to leave your Village for Benin Republic? Or Will OBJ do that? What every right thinking Nigerian should do is to encourage Yar’adua to move in soldiers from 82 division and Artillery to take back Bakassi. That land rightly belongs to Nigeria and the people want to be identified as Nigerians. If this kind of thing is allowed to happen, one day Niger Republic will bring one Colonial document and claim ownership of Katsina and Kano. Posted by ALORAINIDDEVIL| 26.11.2007 13:21

Exxcuzme  Villager

# 5 =ALORAINIDDEVIL;2091823109>Sir, I am sorry to say this, what you just wrote is Nonsense. If your Village or OBJ’s Village is in the boundary between Benin and Nigeria? Will you agree to leave your Village for Benin Republic? Or Will OBJ do that? What every right thinking Nigerian should do is to encourage Yar’adua to move in soldiers from 82 division and Artillery to take back Bakassi. That land rightly belongs to Nigeria and the people want to be identified as Nigerians. If this kind of thing is allowed to happen, one day Niger Republic will bring one Colonial document and claim ownership of Katsina and Kano. Bode Elewura would like that.........:D Posted by Exxcuzme| 26.11.2007 13:45

owiz22  JJC

# 6 All this article has done is list the silly technicalities and complex legal jargon that the ICJ used to justify its verdict on the disputed peninsula. What power or what jurisdiction did Britain or any other colonial power have over the African continent in the first place? why should the evils of ancient imperialism be accepted as evidence to prove what nation a region should belong to?? ... The people of the region have openly identified themselves as Nigerians and Nigerian Citizens who want no part of the Cameroonian federation. But some passive Bureaucrats who have been tasked to implement the "law" on vulnerable third world countries with turkey brained presidents have sat back and decided that according to "COLONIAL PETITIONING", they should go to another country. THE WORD OF THE COLONIAL MASTER IS FINAL ... not the wish of the people most affected. If not third world Africa can the ICJ tell any other country to give up a land that has been an integral part of the country for many decades ?? . Why does the "Nigerian defense policy" not view this as a massive violation of our national sovereignty? .. Why should the ruling of the ICJ be placed over the Nigerian constitution ?? Posted by owiz22| 26.11.2007 15:08

Bolaji Aluko  Villager

# 7 Palamedes: The information available to me says the following: 1. Cameroon LAND area - 469,440 sq km, Population - 18,060,382 Population Density - 38 per sq km 2. Nigeria LAND area - 910,768 sq km, Population - 135,031,164 Population Density - 148 per sq km So in fact, the figures you stated: QUOTE (1) Cameroon land-per-person is 27sq km whereas it is 6sq km in Nigeria. Pray, sir, why it is wisdom for a country to grant a part of its land to another that has 4 to 5 times more. UNQUOTE are wrong. The correct figures that I have stated are actually in favor of Cameroon and NOT in favor of Nigeria according to your logic, whether in terms of TOTAL LAND size (Nigeria is bigger) or POPULATION DENSITY (Nigeria is more dense). You should find another rationale, Sir. I thank you. Bolaji Aluko Posted by Bolaji Aluko| 26.11.2007 16:02

Bolaji Aluko  Villager

# 8 Dear Compatriots: The issue before the ICJ was not whether there were Nigerians on the Bakassi Peninsula or not, but whether the claim that the land of Bakassi Peninsula ever belonged to the country of Nigeria or to Cameroon. The ruling was that it NEVER belonged to Nigeria but to Cameroon. So please let us make the distinction between the people and the land. I can assure you that there are many places in the Sudan where there are more Nigerians than Sudanese, but that does not make those lands Nigerian. Secondly, the other issue is that you cannot be a responsible nation if you subject yourself to ICJ ruling, and then back out when it rules in a manner not favorable to you. That is 4-1-9. Someone has said that the unappealable ruling was made WITHOUT RESERVATION to further decisions by ANY of the countries involved. Therefore, action to implement the decisions could be taken WITHOUT normal approvals, but it DOES not exclude such approvals. The third issue is what will happen if we GO BACK on our earlier agreements (with the ICJ ruling; signing of the Green Tree Agreement) and withdrawal of troops and Nigerians from Bakassi. There will be diplomatic, economic and military consequences, as well as possibly other unintended consequences. But if the action of the Nigerian Parliament will once and for all remove future angst over this matter, then all that is necessary should be done. But the sense that I get from all that I have read is that we cannot unring this particular bell: Bakassi belongs to Cameroon for the forseeable future, and we need not go to war with a neighbor over this land that is still in Africa after all. Let us keep the discourse civil please. The people in and around Bakassi are suffering enough for us not to visit them with another senseless war from behind our keyboards. I thank you all. Bolaji Aluko Posted by Bolaji Aluko| 26.11.2007 16:28

skanbroy  Villager

# 9 =Bolaji Aluko;2091823184>Palamedes: The information available to me says the following: 1. Cameroon LAND area - 469,440 sq km, Population - 18,060,382 Population Density - 38 per sq km 2. Nigeria LAND area - 910,768 sq km, Population - 135,031,164 Population Density - 148 per sq km So in fact, the figures you stated: QUOTE (1) Cameroon land-per-person is 27sq km whereas it is 6sq km in Nigeria. Pray, sir, why it is wisdom for a country to grant a part of its land to another that has 4 to 5 times more. UNQUOTE are wrong. The correct figures that I have stated are actually in favor of Cameroon and NOT in favor of Nigeria according to your logic. You should find another rationale, Sir. I thank you. Bolaji Aluko Prof: I think your figures up there actually support Palamedes' position. 38 Cameroonians inhabit 1 sq km of land compared to 148 Nigerians squeezzed into the same Land size. Then why give up scares land to a country that proportionally has more. Posted by skanbroy| 26.11.2007 16:29

Bolaji Aluko  Villager

# 10 Skanbroy: That is not what Palimenedes is claiming. He used some figures and came to a wrong conclusion. As to your own assertion, it depends on the size of Bakassi and its population - whether the addition of the size and population to either Cameroon or Nigeria increases or decreases the population density, and what is desired by each country: an increase or decrease in population density. According to Wikipedia, the Bakassi peninsula consists of a number of low-lying, largely mangrove covered islands covering an area of around 665 km², with its population subject of some dispute, but generally put at between 150,000 and 300,000 people. Consequently, Bakassi does not add much to either the population or density of Nigeria or Cameroon for us to go to war over. On those particular scores, Bakassi is truly marginal, even though 150,000 to 300,000 people are NOT marginal, so don't get me wrong. But it is JEJUNE to be even using those considerations (population, popuation density) at all to determine the desirability of annexing a land that does not belong to you. I merely wanted to indicate to Palemedes that his figures were wrong. Bolaji Aluko Posted by Bolaji Aluko| 26.11.2007 16:45

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