FG ignored our advice on Bakassi -Prof. Asiwaju
What is SIRA about? It means Society for International Relations Awareness. It was recently incorporated by the Corporate Affairs Commission. It’s a learned society involving scholarly and policy interests in international relations and the leadership is dominated by academics in cognate disciplines of international relations, political science, history and law, not excluding mass communication […]
What is SIRA about?
It means Society for International Relations Awareness. It was recently incorporated by the Corporate Affairs Commission. It’s a learned society involving scholarly and policy interests in international relations and the leadership is dominated by academics in cognate disciplines of international relations, political science, history and law, not excluding mass communication experts. It was facilitated by Fredrick Evan Foundation, but it’s an independent body. Currently, the chairman of SIRA is Professor Nuhu Yaqub, the former Vice Chancellor of the University of Abuja.
What is your view on the call for a review of the ICJ judgment on Bakassi peninsula?
Our position paper was presented at the one-day meeting of experts with the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on the 19th of September this year. The issue in focus was a matter of interest to the House Committee on the possibility of going back to ICJ for review of the judgment. I’m not a lawyer but a member of SIRA working group. But the point is that the instrument of the ICJ allows for state parties to come back to it, if they have sufficient reasons to do so.
Three of such reasons could be: One, if there is indication and evidence that fraud was involved at the time of the judgment. Second, if since the judgment, new facts have come to light which were not pleaded at the time of the trial. Third is the body of law that was pertinent to the case but was not taken cognizance of at the time of the trial. That is why we agreed at SIRA that certainly Nigeria can exercise its right within the time frame of ten years and that is allowed by the status of the court.
What we are worried about is whether the grounds that are being canvassed for going back to the ICJ are sufficiently weighty. For instance, one area of the information that came to us at the meeting was that the German diplomat at the time of the 1913 Anglo/German treaty had been researched to the effect that he claimed that the 1913 treaty was not actually signed. The worry in SIRA is that in accepting the treaty of 1913, the ICJ was presented with evidence of actual ratification of the 1913 treaty.
Whether the ICJ will now look at this new information with the concrete evidence of ratification is a different matter, we should leave that to the ICJ to come to terms with. There is also the issue of the prejudice to the issue of 1951. There was this issue that Bakassi was not mentioned in the figures that were returned in the judgment of 1951. Again, the experts at SIRA sharply insist on information that the issue was also pleaded in the eight year-marathon trial between 1994 and 2002.
There are some doubts as to whether this is really an arguable new ground. There is also the issue of allegation of maltreatment of our people on the Bakassi Peninsula in contravention of the Green Tree Agreement that came in the wake of Nigeria and Cameroon agreeing to implement the judgment.
You know when allegations like this are made, it’s one thing for one side to make this kind of allegation and is another point to allow the other side also to respond and wait for what the court is going to say about that. Since this allegation will address this issue of implementation of the judgment, whether that is sufficient for going back to say the court should review the judgment itself is what SIRA is a little bit doubtful of.
Why we went in the first place to respond to the suit filed by Cameroon against us in 1994, according to experts who have knowledge on the matter, was because Nigeria is a signatory to the instrument establishing the court. Once, we are signatory to the instrument establishing the court, the implication is that we have, as a nation, committed to the compulsory jurisdiction of the court without any reservation. It will be irresponsible for Nigeria not to respond to the case because it was Cameroon that took us to court.
If you are to review the implementation of the resolutions reached over Bakassi, will you say Nigeria and Cameroon have been fair to the people of the area in the last ten years?
One important aspect of the position of SIRA at the recent hearing on this issue is to persuade the representatives of the House of Representatives committee on foreign affairs which is legitimately concerned with the situation of the people of the Bakassi Peninsula. The position of SIRA in respect of this is to draw the attention of the House to the fact that the problems are from different levels. They are multi-dimensional and that it’s not just looking in one direction of going back to court to seek review that is the solution to the problems that are facing the people of Bakassi Peninsula.
There are other directions. What we are trying to do in SIRA’s position statement is to draw the House committee’s attention to these approaches to redress the injustice that the people of Bakassi Peninsula have faced since the judgment of 2002. For instance, there are two dimensions. On the Nigerian people’s peninsula which the ICJ found lying in the Cameroon’s territory, Nigeria did not concede anything. The court did not concede anything.
What it (the court) based its findings on was to confirm Cameroon’s sovereignty over the Peninsula and what Nigeria did was to accept that judgment and to mutually agree with Cameroon to implement it.
There are two sides to human angle. The first relates to those Nigerians who voluntarily relocated from the Peninsula that have been declared part and parcel of Cameroon’s territory to Nigeria. But the question is: Have Nigerian authorities been fair to these people we moved? Not only did they move but also government moved them with their Bakassi local government.
The local government was relocated to Akpabio local government of Cross River State. Now the question is what has happened to the huge sum of money, in billions of naira, that was voted by the federal government for the resettlement of these people. Two, what has happened to the regular allocations by the federal government for the benefit of Bakassi local government since the judgment of October 10, 2002. These are the questions that SIRA is asking. It’s fine for the House to be concerned with the alleged impropriety in the judgment of the ICJ.
For that reason, nobody is saying Nigeria should not go back to court to seek review, but the part of the implementation that relates to Nigerians, how much of that part has been taken care of? If the resources that have been voted for their resettlement have been properly utilized, the protests that we have been witnessing in the past few weeks would not have been necessary.
The Olusegun Obasanjo administration was blamed in some quarters for hurriedly accepting the judgment and signing agreement with Cameroon. What is the position of SIRA on this?
I don’t think so. I never had the impression that there was a rush on the part of the Obasanjo administration on the ICJ judgment on Bakassi Peninsula. Remember, when the judgment was pronounced on Thursday 10th of October 2002, Obasanjo administration issued a statement rejecting the judgment and did not leave anybody in doubt about its stand on the ICJ judgment on Bakassi Peninsula.
The subsequent acceptance of the judgment and signing of the Green Tree Agreement by the federal government and Cameroon was a function of enlightenment, education and advocacy for accepting the judgment even in the face of all the hues and cries from the Nigerian public.
There is a lot of misinformation that had been going on about this issue over the years and nobody is willing to take public statement on the falsehood that has been in the air about this matter.
So, there is no argument for saying that the Obasanjo administration rushed into accepting the judgment. The realization came and the administration accepted that realization that really Nigeria has no alternative except it wanted to risk being branded as a lawless member state of United Nations. I think we should give it to Obasanjo for realizing that there is nothing we could do than to accept the judgment.
Having entered the case, gone through the trial, and with judgment now in our hands, there are a lot of consultations and a lot of efforts. I want to say that the creation of the Nigeria/Cameroon mixed commission was part of these efforts to see our way through the soft-landing on the implementation process of the judgment and as you know the Nigeria/Cameroon mixed commission which was created to oversee the implementation of the verdict of 2002 operated in two sub-commissions.
There is the sub-commission on the delimitation and demarcation. They are still working on the boundaries of the two countries on the basis of the judgment of the court. The second is the sub-commission on the affected population.
How do we ensure the implementation of the judgment without local communities that were affected? They are now bearing the brunt of negativity of the judgment? I happened to be the leader of Nigerian delegation of the Nigeria/Cameroon mixed commission on affected population in Nigeria.
It was a long process and the Obasanjo administration should be credited for being cautious and for ensuring that the implementation of the judgment does not adversely affect our people. That is why the Green Tree Agreement on the implementation process as it affects population in Bakassi area was an executive agreement between Obasanjo and Paul Biya of Cameroon to gain maximum concession for Nigerian population who were at the Peninsula at that time.
So, contrary to popular opinion in Nigeria that care was not taken to ensure the human rights, people’s rights on the peninsula were considered by the Green Tree Agreement.
Whom should we blame now for the plight of the people of Bakassi Peninsula?
You would recall I said earlier that in seeking whom to blame, one boot is in one foot of Nigeria. As for the federal government on the resettlement fund for the Bakassi people, somebody must account for how the money was spent. The regular vote, budgetary allocation for Bakassi local government since the judgment of 2002, somebody must give account for it. This issue of accountability is yet to be addressed.
On the side of Cameroon, of course, if they maltreat our people, government should systematically collect and collate information and articulate it. It’s not enough to emotionally argue in the air. We should marshal our argument such that the data are right and the articulation is appropriate.
Why did Cameroon go back to the United Nations or probably to the Security Council? Why did they have the courage to do so? Whatever the reason, they had to do so. Nigeria also has the right to also respond. But our response will not be appropriate without data, without collation, analysis, and without proper articulation.
That is the only way we can go to counter their allegation. But here, we can see the mud on our own feet here. We are asking for accountability and resettlement funds. We are asking for accountability of budgetary allocation to Bakassi local government. We are still seeking answers to these.
Our position in SIRA is that it’s good enough to be looking at the door of Cameroon at which to lay blame for the plight of our people. But we cannot ignore what part of the blame that rested on us on the consequence of accountability of the funds that accrued to resettlement of the affected people and the running of Bakassi local government.
What is SIRA’s advice to the federal government on this?
First, the arm of government that can go back to ICJ for review is the executive in particular; the ministry of Justice that is backed by the ministry of foreign affairs. It’s these two ministries whose portfolios embraced the issue of Bakassi Peninsula. They can now go back to say that they are seeking review.
We, in SIRA, have advised on what the ministry of foreign affairs should do by looking at the grounds that the House is seeking as justification for going back to court. More so, it’s critically looking at the data that are being presented as fresh facts for argument to fault the judgment of 2002.
Fresh facts that have not been pleaded in the trial through 1994 to 2002. SIRA is also concerned about the veracity of this case so that we don’t go back to the ICJ in jamboree as usual when we knew the case was very bad. In 1994, many experts knew that the case was very bad.
On the argument that we did not go to the ICJ with our first eleven, I’m not a lawyer to evaluate those who went and those who did not go. But I’m aware, as the commissioner for the international boundary commission, before the case went to court, we had done a lot of research from France, Britain and other countries.
We collated data but the legal taskforce that the federal government set up to be supervised by the international boundary commission through my office as commissioner of the international boundary had a working group that embraced most brilliant people like Ajomo, Late T. A. T. Yagba, who was director of research at Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies.
There was Professor Tony Chukwura, who was our top expert in international law. Justice Keshinro, who was a magistrate in Southern Cameroon and myself, an historian on international boundaries. We also had the Surveyor General of the Federation. We went out to do this research locally and internationally and we came up with a legal taskforce report. That report was the first business of the federal executive council when government moved seat from Lagos to Abuja following Okar’s coup d’etat in 1990.
And it was very clear that we were not going to win through the way of litigation. This was four years before Cameroon took us to court.
Our advice was that we should seize the initiative and go to the ICJ before Cameroon had the chance to do so and take the alternative root of arbitration. But people, who thought litigation was the way out, for whatever reason, ignored the important findings of the taskforce. The outcome of this was absolutely predictable and whoever has any doubt on this should go and read the report of the legal taskforce that we presented to government under my leadership.
In your position paper, you called for delisting of Bakassi local government. Do you think this is the way out?
I’m glad you read our position paper. That decision was part of SIRA’s position on what we called constitution issues. We argued whether the Green Tree Agreement was matter of jurisdiction or not. The House committee is free to take it or reject it.
As far as knowledge is concerned, this is an executive agreement between the Head of State of Nigeria and the Head of State of Cameroon in continuation of their commitment to implementing the judgment.
Remember the judgment itself bothered on the alignment of borders from lake-Chad to the Atlantic Ocean, agreement reached for resettlement, exchange of territory, exchange of population. Similar agreement has been reached between Nigeria and Cameroon on exchange of territory. Community in the land area which Nigeria now considered very critical in the area of our interest is population that was affected.
We cannot take the Green Tree Agreement and isolate it from the entire integral body of the judgment and the implementation that Nigeria has committed itself. We cannot say now that we cannot accept the Green Tree Agreement provisions as it affects our people in Bakassi Peninsula more or less as we could have rejected the exchange that is already taking place in the Lake-Chad basin area.
We argued this in the SIRA position paper that these are not agreements that could be treated as subject to ratification by the national legislature. We argued reasonably and on technical grounds that the Green Tree Agreement and the ICJ judgment is not subject of ratification of the legislature. We examined the constitutional status of the Bakassi local government and our findings led us to two alternative recommendations.
The Bakassi territory is not part of the boundaries of Nigeria as we have assumed over the years because the territorial entity that gave Bakassi local government its base has been ceded to Cameroon. We argued that it had not been as easy as it had been with the local government since its relocation to Akpabio local government. Bakassi local government, as a territorial entity by reason of the ICJ judgment, should be delisted because the creation of the local government in December 4, 1996 as well as its inclusion in the 1976 constitution under the military was prejudiced since the case was already before the ICJ.