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SUNDAY MUSINGS BY MOBOLAJI E.
ALUKO, PH.D.
On the Unnecessary Re-Opening of Cameroon-Nigeria-Bakassi Wounds - Some
Quick Thoughts 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
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 II
link
______________________________________________________________________________________
APPENDIX III link Greentree Accord to Reinforce ICJ Verdict Full text of the agreement signed in New York on June 12, 2006.
APPENDIX IV
See:
link lNigeria Cameroon%22
CASE CONCERNING THE LAND AND MARITIME BOUNDARY BETWEEN CAMEROON AND NIGERIA (CAMEROON V. 'NIGERIA: EQUATORIAL GUINEA intervening), 10 October, 2002
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