Nigeria: Bakassi - 1922 - 39 Maps Had Rio Del Rey As Eastern End of Peninsula
Tagged: Arms and Armies, Cameroon, Central Africa, Conflict, Conflict, Europe and Africa, External Relations, Governance, Nigeria, West Africa
2 OCTOBER 2012
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Senior advocate of Nigeria, Robert Clarke has been speaking about the facts surrounding the ownership of the Bakassi Peninsula. In an interview with ... ( Resource: Nigeria Has Never Owned the Bakassi - Robert Clarke
Prof Walter Ofonagoro in this segment insists that the international boundary between southern Cameroun and southern Nigeria started from cape Bakassi on the Atlantic coast and moving inland along the western bank of the Rio del Rey river in the 1922-39 reports to the League of Nations.

Professor J.C. Anene confirms in his book, International Boundaries of Nigeria, that this portion of the boundary from the sea, at Bakassi, to the Cross River "Rapids", had been settled by 1913, and were not nullified by the 1913 Agreements: "In the final settlement, the "rapids" of the provisional boundary became the thalweg of the Cross River at the bend of the river about two and a half miles upstream from Obokun.

The boundary southwards followed the thalweg of the Cross River down to its junction with the Akwa River. The thalweg of the latter River continued the boundary, and thence to a number of hill tops, demarcated with pillars.

From these hill-tops, the boundary followed the thalweg of the Akwa Yafe River down to the coast. Here, the boundary was coincident with the Western Bank of the Rio Del Rey estuary."

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President Shehu Shagari who had served as a Federal Minister in Nigeria, since 1954, also states that the boundary between Nigeria and Cameroons had long been settled down the Rio del Rey, and the territorial waters of the two countries finally defined and settled between the British and the Germans up to the three-mile limit since 1913, and demarcated on a colonial map which both Britain and Germany signed. He further maintained that it was the discovery of oil in large quantities under the sea in the Bakassi region that aggravated the problem of maritime international boundaries.

Cameroon then took advantage of Nigeria's preoccupation with the Civil War in the late sixties, to start drilling for off-shore oil, in a disputed area in the sea along the Nigerian border. Finally, he stressed that the existing Nigerian border at the sea coast of Rio Del Rey was protected by the OAU Resolution of 1964, respecting the inviolability of inherited colonial boundaries.

Every student of modern European history is familiar with the aggressive posture of the German government in foreign affairs at the time, which eventually led to the First World War. In 1913, European powers were seeking shelter in a frenzy of alliance negotiations, as Germany bullied the other powers for concessions in their colonial possessions.

Germany bullied France into surrendering substantial territory to German Cameroons as a settlement in the Moroccan Question of 1911 and 1912 when Germany tried to seize Morocco from France.

Britain, likewise was pressured to surrender Bakassi Peninsula to Germany, but never did, and never allowed the mutual border from Rio Del Rey to be moved to the Calabar/Cross River Estuary even in the March 11, 1913 Agreement.

Great Britain insisted in Article 21 of that Agreement, that the boundary from Thalweg of Akwa Yafe River, "shall lie wholly to the East of the navigable channels of the Cross and Calabar Rivers", that is, towards the Rio del Rey boundary. All the documents mentioned above, are a matter of public record, and can be found in the following publications:

1. Walter I. Ofonagoro, Trade and Imperialism in Southern Nigeria, 1885-1929. (New York, Nok Publishers, 1979)

2. J.C. Anene, Southern Nigeria in Transition, 1885-1906, (Cambridge, 1966)

3. International Boundaries of Nigeria (New York, The Humanities Press, 1970).

4. Clive Perry, LLD. The Consolidated Treaty Series, (New York: Oceana Publications, 1978)

5. The treaties are also published in Sir E. Hertslet, the Map of Africa by Treaty, Vol. III (London: Frank Cass and Co. 1967).

Cameroons and the League of Nations: There is additional information about concealment of material evidence and misinformation that have a bearing on this case.

I would like to draw the attention of the reader to papers presented at the Yale University Conference on Imperial and Colonial History, held at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut in Spring, 1965. In that Conference, which paraded the world's most acclaimed experts in British and German Imperial and Colonial History, papers relevant to Germany's brief 22 year rule in Cameroons (1884-1916) were presented. Particularly apt is the paper presented by Professor David E. Gardinier of Yale University, entitled "The British in Cameroons, 1919-1939".

He was able to demonstrate that Britain and France invaded German Cameroons at the outbreak of the war in 1914, and by February 18, 1916, the last German outpost at Mora, was routed.

Sharing of German Camerouns

Thereafter, the British and French allies set about sharing German Cameroons. Britain already had an Empire in which the sun never set and so, she was not interested in acquiring more colonies.

She however took enough territory from defeated German Cameroons to re-unite territories and peoples who had been divided by previous Anglo-German boundary lines. In German Borno in North-West Cameroons, Britain took enough territory to unify the Nigerian Emirate of Borno; and in German Adamawa in Cameroons, she took enough territory to reconstitute the Nigerian Emirate of Adamawa.

France also recovered all the territories she had ceded to German Cameroons in the Moroccan Crisis of 1911 and 1912. Both Britain and France set up their respective administrations in their partitioned spheres of Cameroon in March, 1916.

On March 4, 1916, Britain and France agreed to a provisional partition of German Cameroons, and by June 29, 1919, Article 119 of the Treaty of Versailles recognized the renunciation by Germany of all her colonies in favour of the Allies. Who were the Allies? They were Britain, France, Italy, Russia, and the United States who joined the war in 1917.

Before the signing of the League Treaty on June 29, 1919, the Supreme Council of the League of Nations decided that all German colonies with the exception of Togo and Cameroons should be placed under mandate. France was sure that she was entitled to sovereignty over her portion of the conquered German colonies. Britain just wanted enough territory to fill out the edges of her existing colonies of Nigeria and Ghana.

On May 7, 1919, the two powers were asked to advise the League on what to do with Cameroons and Togo. Eventually, they took their time to consolidate their hold on German Cameroon.

They also wrote their own terms of the conditions stated in the League Mandates which they signed on July 20, 1922, three years after the League of Nations had been set up. They had controlled their conquered colonies for four years before the League of Nations was born.

Their mandate allowed them to integrate their colonies with their new conquests, so long as they maintained "law, order and good government" and "improved the moral character" of their charges.

These were, after all, "B" Mandates which were, at the time, not deemed capable of self-determination. By 1922, Great Britain had already dispensed with the cession of Bakassi to Germany, and quietly re-integrated that peninsula with Nigeria.

The terms of the Mandate Treaty required Britain to send Annual Reports to the League Headquarters in Geneva, on the administration of the Mandates. I have read those reports sent to London by the British Government of Southern Cameroons, between 1922 and 1939. Most of them have maps and other statistical data. None of those maps show Bakassi as a German Territory.

Rather, all the maps that accompanied these Annual Reports on Southern Cameroon, between 1922 and 1939, showed the international boundary between southern Cameroon and Southern Nigeria, starting from Cape Bakassi on the Atlantic coast of the Bakassi Peninsula, and moving inland along the Western bank of the Rio del Rey which was the Eastern end of the Bakassi Peninsula.

Thence at the headwaters of the Rio del Rey, the boundary turned west along the north shore of Bakassi Peninsula and then north into the Akwa Yafe River thalweg, and thence into the interior. Furthermore, the Annual Reports dealt only with the four administrative Divisions of Southern Cameroons, namely Mamfe, Victoria, Kumba and Bamenda. Britain never sent any report on Bakassi to the League between 1922 and 1946.

Tagged: Cameroon, Central Africa, Governance, Nigeria, West Africa
3 OCTOBER 2012http://allafrica.com/stories/201210041144.html
Comment
Prof Walter Ofonagoro in this segment argues that the Law No.126 of 1954, placed Bakassi in Nigeria, and not in Cameroon, at independence. This shows that Rio del Rey has remained the Boundary since 1893.

The Boundary Law No. 126 of 1954. Let us return briefly to the Boundary law No. 126 of 1954. That law referred to the Southern Boundary of Eastern Nigeria as the "Sea".

There is, therefore, no doubt that the Sea referred to in that boundary law was the Sea at the South shore of Bakassi Peninsula. The border is on the Western bank of the Rio Del Rey, and that entire Western bank is the Ports limit.

That law is still in force. What this means in effect, is that Britain never passed on any Bakassi inheritance to the Cameroons. Britain had simply returned Bakassi to its original owners before leaving Nigeria.

Consequently, Nigeria is the one with the title to Bakassi. Therefore, under the principle of the inviolability of inherited Colonial boundaries declared by the OAU Resolution AHG/Res. 16 (1) of the Organization of African Unity, in Cairo, Egypt, on July 21, 1964, the Uti Possidetis, Ubi Possidetis, so far as the Rio Del Rey boundary is concerned, belongs to Nigeria. Definition of the "Sea" as the Southern Border of Eastern Region of Nigeria, in the Constitution of the Federation of Nigeria, 1960; and the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1963.

We have noted that the Boundaries Definition Law No.126 of 1954, defined the southern boundary of the Eastern Region of Nigeria as "the Sea". Article 134 (6) of the Constitution of the Federation of Nigeria, 1960, states that "the continental shelf of the Region shall be deemed part of that Region."

This same provision is repeated in Article 140 (6) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1963. At independence, Nigeria was a true federation, and Law No. 126 of 1954 defined the territories of the Federation of Nigeria, in terms of the territories of its component units.

The only territory belonging to the Federal Government of Nigeria under the 1960 and 1963 Constitutions as defined by the Boundaries Definition Law No.126 of 1954, was the Federal Capital Territory of Lagos. Thus, the continental shelf of Eastern Nigeria, in 1960, included the land under the seas off-shore Bakassi Peninsula.

That was why the Eastern Region, and after 1967, its successor littoral states of south-eastern Cross River, Akwa Ibom, Rivers and Bayelsa, have continued to enjoy off-shore oil derivation revenues from the Federal Government. This constitutional confirmation, makes Bakassi part of the territory of the Eastern Region, and part of the territory of Cross River State, because the east end boundary of Eastern Nigeria at the Rio del Rey is right on the Bakassi Peninsula.

Thus, clearly, the Law No.126 of 1954, placed Bakassi in Nigeria, and not in Cameroon, at independence. This shows that Rio del Rey has remained the Boundary since 1893.

In a recent advertisement in The Punch Newspaper of August 3, 2012, the Government of Cross River stated, in connection with the matter of the 76 oil wells dispute with Akwa Ibom State: "The dispute over the 76 oil wells is simple.

The territory and oil wells have always been in Cross River State as part of Bakassi, Akpabuyo and Calabar South Local Government Areas. Because Bakassi has been handed over to Cameroon, Akwa Ibom State now wants to take over this portion of Cross River State which did not go to Cameroon".

The Nigerian Supreme Court, without waiting for parliamentary ratification of the Agreements, on the basis of which the ICJ made its controversial ruling, has already implemented it by ruling that Cross River State is no longer a Littoral State.

The significant point here is that the Federal Government signed into international law, the Ngo/Coker line of demarcation of sea frontiers between Nigeria and Cameroon, since June 1, 1975, and the Yaoundé I and II Declarations of August 14, 1970 and April 4, I971, ignoring the Nigerian International Border which we inherited at independence, which had been there since 1893, and allowed Cameroon to be drilling Nigerian oil, even at the cost of destroying the old Calabar River Navigable Channel since 1971.

Calabar river navigable channel

What this means is that Nigeria has been maintaining two international boundaries since 1970-75, the one, at Rio Del Rey is the legal one. It is inviolable, and therefore not nullifiable, by an established principle of international law. The other is, the Ngo/Coker line, drawn and signed by General Gowon himself, on the advice of his Director of Surveys, at the Yaoundé meeting, where he reached an agreement with his Cameroonian counterpart, Alhaji Ahmadu Ahidjo, who also signed.

Some scholars, both Cameroonian and Nigerian have stated that during their one-on-one meeting in April 1971, President Ahidjo asked his surveyor to produce a map, and stop arguing, and turned to his Nigerian guest, and asked him to indicate the spot on the map where the Thalweg of the Akwa Yafe River should start, to draw out the three mile line which should indicate where the maritime demarcation should begin. Surveyor Coker pointed to a spot and General Gowon drew the line.

It turned out not to be the center of the navigable channel of the Akwa Yafe River, which the Treaty of March 11, 1913 stated, must be wholly to the East of the Navigable Channels of the Cross River and Calabar River:

"The line that General Gowon drew, on the advice of Chief Coker, was not the Navigable Channel of the Akwa Yafe River, instead, it ran into a ridge, and cut across the Navigable Channels of the Cross and Calabar Rivers, which the British had intended, (with German agreement), to be completely on the Nigerian side, west of Akwa Yafe channel".

Drawn out to its nautical limit of 18 miles, it gave away to Cameroon a huge area of the seas off-shore Cross River State, and brought Cameroonian oil drilling platforms right into the navigable channel of the Calabar River, since April 1971. What did Nigeria do?

She went right in there and sank her own drilling rigs. In 1972, the Nigerian Ports Authority was instructed by Commodore Wey, to dredge a new Navigable Channel for Calabar Port, this time, more to the West of the old one.

The only problem is that the new one is dangerously close to the Ibeno Springs, a whirlpool area, in the Sea, close to the Ibeno shore, which has been pronounced a hazard to shipping. Every Head of State, including General Gowon, has rejected and denounced that line, and that includes General Muritala Mohammed, General Obasanjo (1977), President Shagari, President Babangida, and General Abacha.

The Supreme Military Council refused to ratify it in 1971 and 1975, but because it had been signed, Nigeria was caught! It was on that line, trickishly extorted from General Gowon by Alhaji Ahidjo that the World Court decision has been based. It was not drawn as stipulated in Article 21 of the "dead" Agreement of March 11, 1913, "due wholly East of the Calabar and Cross River Navigable channels".

Instead, it was drawn West across the two channels of Calabar and Cross River. It destroyed them both for the purposes of Marine Navigation. Can the Ngo/Coker line be therefore said to have been established as stipulated in Article 21 of the Treaty of March 11, 1913? Certainly not.