Nigeria declared on Friday that it would not go back on the final handover to Cameroon on Aug. 14 of the oil-rich Bakassi Peninsula on the maritime border between the two countries.
Minister of Justice Michael Aondoakaa said the handover would go ahead despite an Abuja court the previous day issuing an order restraining the government from doing so.
The order, he insisted, was not binding on the government.
“It was not only confusing, but it was an aberration,” he said.
“The status quo that I know is that there is a judgment of the International Court of Justice [ICJ], which the Nigerian government had partly implemented and which we must completely implement,” he said.
“The status quo that is existing in law is the final judgment of the ICJ, which was served on the Nigerian government and which held that Bakassi belongs to Cameroon. The ICJ judgment is binding on us and we are not going back on its implementation,” he said.
The Abuja court on Thursday issued an interim injunction at the request of a number of local residents of the peninsula stopping the Aug. 14 final ceding.
In October 2002, the International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled that Bakassi belonged to Cameroon and should be ceded to it.
In June 2006, Nigeria signed the “Green Tree” agreement with Cameroon in New York stating that Cameroon would assume full sovereignty over the peninsula on Aug. 14.
Residents led by Emmanuel Etene and Ani Esin, former area council chairmen, sought compensation of US$3.3 billion for the 206,000 people of Bakassi to allow the final ceding.
Their counsel Kayode Fasetire told the court on Thursday that Bakassi people were not challenging the judgment of the ICJ, but were challenging the modalities for its implementation.
“We know that we are bound by the judgment of the ICJ, but the Nigerian government did not submit the Green Tree agreement to parliament for ratification as constitutionally required. Nigeria has not done what it is supposed to do before implementing the agreement,” Fasetire said.
The people of Bakassi also demand to be settled in an area of their choice before the final ceding. Their “New Bakassi” new home, they say, is inhabited by people hostile to Bakassi “refugees.”
New Bakassi, they say, is landlocked and ideal for farmers — but not for fishermen like them.
They allege that Cameroonian authorities, in whose hands the Nigerian government left their fate, had a history of imposing undue taxes, molesting, assaulting and killing Nigerian citizens in Bakassi.
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