- Cameroonian and Nigerian delegates to a "mixed commission" on the dispute over the Bakassi Peninsula have met in the Nigerian capital Abuja to discuss the implementation of an international court order, giving the peninsula to Cameroon.
The UN-chaired panel on the Cameroon-Nigeria border dispute over the oil-rich Bakassi Peninsula thus concluded its fourth meeting. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Special Representative for West Africa, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, chaired the meeting.
The meeting in Abuja, Nigeria, of the "mixed commission" - so named because it comprises representatives from both sides - discussed the progress towards the planning and implementation of the demarcation exercise of the land boundary as well as other issues.
The commission was formed in response to a ruling last October on the Bakassi dispute by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which essentially awarded Cameroon rights to the oil-rich peninsula. Following the court's decision, Nigeria asserted that the judgment did not consider "fundamental facts" about the Nigerian inhabitants of the territory, whose "ancestral homes" the ICJ had adjudged to be in Cameroonian territory.
Meeting with the UN Secretary-General in Geneva last September, Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Paul Biya of Cameroon agreed to set up the commission to handle their differences, mandating it to consider all the implications of the ICJ's decision, including the need to protect the rights of the affected populations in both countries.
In October last year, the Nigerian government said in an official statement, the ICJ judgment on the border conflict with Cameroon was "virtually null and void." President Olusegun Obasanjo denied UN statements claiming he had given a promise to respect whichever ICJ ruling.
The court - dominated by judges from the old colonial powers - had defended an "illegal" treaty between Britain and Germany of 1913, ignoring the self-determination of the rightful, historic owners of the disputed Bakassi Peninsula, according to the Nigerian government's reaction to the court ruling last year.
The population of the Bakassi Peninsula generally supports the Nigerian version and holds Nigerian passports. In this context, the Nigerian government last year assured "Nigerians of its constitutional commitment to protect its citizenry," meaning that "on no account will Nigeria abandon her people and their interests."
Since then, however, there have been elections and the Nigerian government has been more careful not to make inflammatory statements. The Cameroonian-Nigerian commission already has met four times to discuss the implementation of the ICJ ruling, however making only slow progress.
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