• PRONACO offers legal aid to indigenes

SMARTING from a sense of betrayal by the Federal Government, the people of Bakassi may take their destiny in their own hands by seeking self-determination, according to lawmakers from the area.

The Bakassi Peninsula has been ceded to Cameroun following the International Court of Justice ruling in 2002.

Already, the Pro-National Conference Organisation (PRONACO) has said it will deploy a legal team and other experts to support the Bakassi people.

Besides, the Deputy Chairman of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in Cross River State, Mr. Cletus Ogban, has asked President Goodluck Jonathan to resign from office for failing to defend the country’s interest in Bakassi.

Two lawmakers under the auspices of the Bakassi Support Group, Senator Ewa Henshaw and representative Nkoyo Toyo at the weekend told reporters at the National Assembly that the Nigerian authorities failed to consider the security implications of ceding the peninsula to Cameroun.

“What is happening in Bakassi may turn out to be four times that of Biafra. Our interaction with the people of the peninsula has revealed that they are talking of self- determination.

“Though the people in the Bakassi Peninsula have been jettisoned by the Nigerian government, they have a right to seek self-determination as provided for in the Green Tree Agreement,” Henshaw said.

He condemned the Federal Government’s refusal to file for a review of the International Court of Justice ruling of 2002, which gave Cameroun right to the Bakassi Peninsula.

While Nigeria had the opportunity to appeal the ruling till October 10, the Federal Government said it had no fresh facts to appeal.

Henshaw particularly expressed disappointment in the manner the Federal Government handled the issue and wondered if Nigeria’s foreign policy was meant “to please foreign interests or safeguard its citizens’ rights.”

He said the passing of the October 10 window for the appeal for a review of the ICJ ruling raised a number of questions: “Were they (the Federal Government) supposed to prepare a brief? And if so, why not? Was it a case of undermining the directive of the President and the National Assembly as well as the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA)?

“The President called a meeting in which certain directives were given. A committee was set up and was told to prepare a brief for the review of the ICJ ruling. Subsequently, the committee was not allowed to function. The Attorney-General and the Minister of Justice thought differently and said there was no evidence. They also said they could not get international lawyers. Long before now, we had prepared fresh evidence”, he said.

Nkoyo Toyo, a former ambassador, expressed dismay at the development and said she had been traumatised by the refusal of the Nigerian government to file for a review.

She said although the option to file for a review had been lost, the Bakassi people still had an option of self-determination under international law.

“The Green Tree Agreement still has a year to run and we have time to file. There are two Bakassis: One is in Nigeria and there is a Bakassi Peninsula, which is now in Cameroun through the ceding of the Bakassi. We have asked the Bakassi people and they are interested in self-determination under international law.

“The last one week was the most difficult for me. I don’t understand how government works. The AGF will have to transform his approach in line with the transformation agenda and the wishes of the people.”

“People have become displaced persons in their own land and they are living in camps. There have been gory pictures of abuses of Nigerians by the Camerounian authorities and no one has asked the people of Bakassi what is their condition. These are Nigerian citizens who our government swore to protect, “ she said.

She lamented that returnees from the peninsula still “hang in camps,” and that those who chose to stay in the Bakassi Pennisula “are treated as immigrants.”

The lawmaker added: “We the Efik are one people and we don’t like the fact that we are being divided into two nations.”

In a statement signed by its spokesperson, Olawale Okunniyi, PRONACO said given the plight of the people of Bakassi following the decision of the Federal Government not to appeal the 2002 ICJ ruling, the conference had come under intense pressure to undertake a strategic intervention on the side of the people of Bakassi.

According to PRONACO: “The caucus of the coalition has met, in the last one week, with several stakeholders and indigenes of Bakassi, including chiefs and leaders of the Bakassi people, who demonstrated overwhelming concern for a popular resolution of the matter, claiming they were not legally part of the 1961 plebiscite which resolved to cede Bakassi to Cameroun.”

The statement also disclosed that a team of lawyers has been mandated to approach both national and international courts on the matter and that a stakeholders and experts’ national colloquium on the burning issue of Bakassi has been slated for October 23 in Lagos to “mobilise a broad synergy on the best way to help the dislodged people of Bakassi.”

Ogban said: “It will be an understatement if I call for the resignation of the President of this country. Of course, if this country is honest, the National Assembly should unanimously stand by my position. That is the major reason why at several for a, I have told people that we as a nation, we have failed because the issue of leadership should not be reduced to sentiment.

“When you see an American citizen, he will be proud to say I am an American, but in Nigeria, it is not so. They will be telling you I am a Yoruba man, I am an Hausa man or Igbo man and all those sorts of things and these are the sentiments that have held us down that we can’t move the nation forward because the leadership quality is based on how much the leader has to offer the people.

“We have found the president wanting, begging to be leader, begging for everything which is not the quality of a leader and so, even as a South-South man, I want to say that we are disappointed as Cross Riverians in the President of this country because as a leader, he would have seen the damage the ceding of Bakassi would do to the people of the state and Nigeria,” he said.

Meanwhile, as anger over the Federal Government’s failure to appeal the ICJ verdict heightens, the people of Bakassi and Efik kingdom have resolved to team up with Southern Cameroun to form an independent nation.

On Tuesday, members of the Cross River State House of Assembly embarked on a peaceful march to the Governor’s Office to protest the decision of the Federal Government not to appeal the judgment as the option for a review expired on October 10, 2012.

Thousands of Bakassi natives assembled at the Cultural Centre ground, Calabar, from where they embarked on a street protest with black hand bands.

With what was on ground, they said, the only option open to them was to seek self-determination since the Federal Government had disappointed them.

They declared that the battle to reclaim their ancestral home had only begun, saying: “We will stop at nothing in getting our freedom since Nigeria does not want us.”

Placards reading ‘Return Bakassi to Nigeria’, ‘Shame on those who sold Bakassi’, ‘Donald Duke betrayed Bakassi’, ‘Our leaders, do not cede our heritage away to a foreign land’ and ‘Abacha, our hero’, among others, were freely displayed to drive home their message. http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=101672:bakassi-may-begin-self-rule-struggle-soon&catid=1:national&Itemid=559