The Surveyor-General of the Federation, Prof. Peter Nwilo, has said Bakassi Peninsula does not belong to Nigeria but to Cameroon. Nwilo made the clarification when he featured as a guest on the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) Forum in Abuja yesterday saying that based on available facts, the disputed territory actually belonged to Cameroon.
Nigeria lost the territory to Cameroon based on a judgment of International Court of Justice in The Hague in October 2002. Nigeria ceded Bakassi to Cameroon on August 14, 2008 following the Greentree Agreement and thus ended the dispute over the 1,000sq/ km territory. Some 90 per cent of citizens in the Peninsula are of the Efik ethnic nationality in Bakassi Local Government Area of Cross River.
“Bakassi was more or less part of what they called Southern Cameroon I know that the available facts did not weigh in favour of Nigeria…the facts they (Cameroon) had at their disposal did not favour Nigeria and that was why we lost it (Bakassi). Even though at times we think it is in Nigeria but the evidences didn’t seem to favour us,” he said.
Nwilo said Nigeria had 10 years to bring up new facts to support its claim and for the judgment to be reviewed but it did not have any new information. “I know just a few months before that, some people brought up some documents but the country felt it was not something new. The condition is that it must be something that we did not have when that case was judged and I don’t think we were able to get something that could take us to the International Court of Appeal”.
“The pillars are always put properly. That’s why I said that the accuracy of those pillars that you see is less than sub-millimetre accuracy. So the accuracy is very high. So it is not the position of the pillars that is the issue; it is the convention, what was agreed. It is after you have agreed on something then you put pillars,” he said.
Culled from the News Agency of Nigeria
De javu. Aside from the numerous conflicting sets of information that came out during the senate hearing, including:
1) the fact that the People of Bakassi were not allowed a referendum to determine where they wish to belong. This violation and infringement upon the rights of the People of Bakassi should suffice as sufficient grounds for revocation of the ICJ Judgement,
2) that the said Green Tree Agreement stipulated that the Parties were free to rengotiate and agree on new terms mutually as confirmed by the Agreement on Pillar 113A between Lanale and Bajie,
3) that the map being used by the National Surveyor General and that of the CRS Surveyor General were not similar,
4) Testimony of the Clan Head for Abu which proved that the boundary between Nigeria and Cameroon were not according to the said map used by the ICJ and which both Communities and Countries did finally agree upon as the status quo,
5) that the new pillars will cause substantial loss of territory to the FRN and people of Nigeria if the activities of the Nigeria representatives ar not checked,
6) that these so-called sanitisation did not include the key stakeholders being the affected communities but a few hand picked persons by Nigeria representatives,
7) Prof. Nwilo appears to saying that the Bakassi territory belongs to Cameroon by viue of the ICJ judgement without referenc to the above and other vital facts that became public during the Senate hearing.
Accordingly, my advise is for all other communities to follow the Lanale-Bajie exampl until the status quo is maintained.
One last point, aside from the Senators accusing the FGN of the rush in implementing the GTA starting with Bakassi, other Senators raised going to war as a last option to protect the communities, whilst others posed the question, who were the AGF and SGN representing???