The Role of the International Court of Justice in the Resolution of the Bakassi Conflict
Chapter One
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The broad objective of this study is to examine the role of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Nigeria-Cameroon boundary disputes. Specifically, the study aims to demonstrate that:
- The adjudication of ICJ on the Bakassi Peninsula constituted the denial of the human rights of Bakassi citizens. ·
- The provisions of the Green Tree Agreement resolve the difficulty in implementing the ICJ ruling on Nigeria-Cameroon boundary dispute. ·
- The interests of external powers affected the adjudication and implementation of the ICJ ruling.
CHAPTER TWO
INTERNATIONAL COURTS OF JUSTICE’S (ICJ) ADJUDICATION ON THE BAKASSI PENINSULA AND HUMAN RIGHTS OF BAKASSI CITIZENS
A BRIEF HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
After the arrival of European colonialists in Nigeria in the second half of the 19th century, the king of old-Calabar signed a treaty of protection with the Queen of England on September 10, 1884. The Bakassi area was at that time under the rule of the Old Calabar. In signing this accord, he literally ceded his Kingdom to Britain as a protectorate. Britain therefore could do whatever she wanted to do with it. Nigeria itself became a state by amalgamation three decades later in 1914. The Bakassi peninsula covers a total area of approximately 1000 sq. km and is located on the extreme eastern end of the Gulf of Guinea between latitudes 4°25‟ and 1 O‟N and longitudes 8°20‟ and 9°08‟E. It is largely made up of a cluster of low-lying, swampy and mangrove covered islands with a population estimated between 150,000 to 300,000 inhabitants. The indigenous inhabitants are predominantly of the Efik tribe, which sees itself as part of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The fact that two great ocean currents, the cold Benguela Current and the warm Guinea Current meet here provides suitable conditions for a very large variety of fish and other forms of maritime wildlife. Most of the inhabitants of the peninsula indulge in fishing. The causes of many conflicts and disputes on the African continent especially those along ethnical lines have been attributed to the fact that colonial powers arbitrarily partitioned the continent among themselves without any meaningful consideration of parameters like history, demographic realities on the ground, ethnicity, language and socio-cultural affinities. In many cases, people from the same ethnic groups found themselves on different sides of the colonial border lines and governed by different European powers. Lord Robert Salisbury, British Prime minister at the time of partitioning and well known for his successes in expanding British influence in Africa, described the partitioning process quite aptly in the following words:
“We the colonial powers have engaged in drawing lines upon maps where no white man‟s feet have ever trod; we have been giving away mountains and rivers and lakes to each other, but we have only been hindered by the small impediment that we never knew exactly where those mountains and rivers and lakes were (Ajibola 1994:6)”
The case of e Bakassi Peninsula is clear proof of this. The European powers involved were merely interested in protecting their own interests rather than the interests of those they claimed they were civilizing. While Germany on the one hand was interested in securing for itself the access to the huge amounts of shrimps in the waters surrounding the peninsula and the assurance from Britain that she would not seek any further expansion to the East, Britain on the other wanted an uninterrupted secure sea passage to Calabar, which at the time was an important commercial post and which today is the main seaport in east Nigeria. In a series of agreements in 1913, Britain and Germany sought to establish an exact demarcation of the borders between Nigeria and Cameroon, which of course did not exist as such. The first treaty entitled: “The Settlement of the Frontier between Nigeria and the Cameroons, from Yola to the Sea,” put Bakassi proper under the jurisdiction of the Germans and the second: The Regulation of Navigation on the Cross River, ceded the “navigable portion” of the offshore border of the peninsula to Britain. Article 21 of the Anglo-German Treaty of 1913 quoted below states the exact position of the border:
“From the centre of the navigable channel on a line joining Bakasi Point and King Point, the boundary shall follow the centre of the navigable channel of the Akwayafe. River as far as the 3-mile limit of territorial jurisdiction. For the purpose of defining this boundary, the navigable channel of the Akwayafe, River shall be considered to lie wholly to the east of the navigable channel of the Cross and Calabar Rivers.(Article xxi Anglo- German Treaty 1913).”
CHAPTER THREE
THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE’S (ICJ) RULING AND THE PROVISIONS OF THE GREE TREE AGREEMENT
ICJ JUDGEMENT- SUMMARY OF THE ICJ RULING
The International court of justice‟s judgment in the case concerning the land and maritime boundary between Nigeria and Cameroon ( on October 10, 2002) is a long one, exceeding 150 pages. Therefore, it will be imperative to give a summary of it since that will help us in our subsequent analysis.
The judgement is as follow:
- The court first decided that the land boundary between the two countries had been fixed by treaties entered into during the colonial period and it upheld the validity of those treaties. It moreover, rejected the theory of historical consolidation put forward by Nigeria and accordingly refused to take into account the effectivites relied upon by Nigeria. It ruled that, in the absence of acquiescence by Cameroon, these effectivities could not prevail over Cameroon‟s conventional titles. Accordingly, the Court decided that, pursuant to the Anglo-German Agreement of 11 March 1913, sovereignty over Bakassi lies with Cameroon. Similarly, the Court fixed the boundary in the Lake Chad area in accordance with the Henderson-Fleuriau Exchange of Notes of 9 January 1931 between France and Great Britain and rejected Nigeria‟s claims to the Darak area and the neigbouring villages.
- Further, the Court drew an extremely precise boundary between the two States. In this respect, in Lake Chad it reached the same conclusions as the Lake Chad Basin Commission. As requested by Nigeria, it then turned to 17 sectors of the land boundary between Lake Chad and pillar 64. In many cases, the solutions adopted in this respect are Malo Senche, Jimbare and Sapeo, between Namberuand Banglang, and in respect of the boundary between the Akbang River and Mount Tosso. The adopted solutions are closer to Cameroon‟s positions in respect of the Kohom River, the area between Mount Kuli and Bourha, the Village of Kotcha, , the Hambere Range areas and the Sama River. The Court adopted intermediate or neutral positions in respect of Limani,the sources of the Tsikakiri,the course from Beacon No.6 to Wamni Budungo, at Tipsan, and from the Hambere Range to the Mburi River. Finally, the Court indicated the precise course of the boundary channel of the Akwayafe to the west of the Bakassi Peninsula.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE ROLE OF EXTERNAL POWERS IN THE ADJUDICATION AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE ICJ JUDGEMENT
FOREIGN INVOLVEMENT
The dispute over Bakassi peninsula between Nigeria and Cameroon has been suspected to be fueled by external powers. Nigeria, for instances, suspected that foreign powers like France, Britain and Germany and US mingled into the dispute in favour of Cameroon (Ngang 2007). First of all, Nigeria never wanted the case to be settled by the ICJ because she claimed the matter could be solved bilaterally at local level. The truth is that she feared the president of the court, Gilbert Guillaume, a French citizen and other European judges like Rosalyn Higgins of Britain and Carl-August Fleischhaver of Germany would be partial in their judgment in favour of Cameroon.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
SUMMARY
This study investigates the role of ICJ in the Nigeria-Cameroon dispute, with special focus on the Bakassi Peninsula. In order to achieve this objective, we raised the following research questions: ·
- Does the ICJ adjudication on Bakassi Peninsula constitutes denial of human rights of Bakassi citizens? ·
- Is the difficulty in the implementationof the ICJ ruling on Nigeria/Cameroon boundary dispute resolved by provisions of the Green Tree Agreement? ·
- Did the interests of external powers affects the adjudication and implementation of the ICJ ruling?
We used the schema theory of security dilemma as expounded by Kanji (cited in Burgess and Burgess 2005), which enabled us to explore the security dilemma- a situation where two or more states are drawn into conflict possibly even war over security concerns, even though none of the states actually desire conflict. This theoretical framework become instrumental to the comprehension and conceptualization of boundary as potential source of interstate dispute in itself because the intricacy of boundary relations, is based both on internal and international legislation which constitutes a complicated mixture of interests, actors and actions. In answer to the research questions posed above, we test the following hypotheses that:
- The ICJ adjudication on Bakassi Peninsula constitutes denial of human rights of Bakassi citizens
- The difficulty in the implementation of the ICJ ruling is resolved by the provisions of the Green Tree Agreement. ·
- The interests of external powers affects the adjudication and implementation of the ICJ ruling.
We adopt qualitative method of data collection and qualitative-descriptive method of analysis respectively and contend that although the judgment of the ICJ was based on facts presented before it by both contending parties, the use of negotiation, mediation and conciliation would have been more effective in the settlement of the dispute contrary to all known conventions.
CONCLUSION
The high spate of boundary disputes among Africa states have been associated with the creation of boundaries in Africa disregarding the relationship between territorial boundaries and the anthropogenic homogeneity of the various ethnic groupings by the colonial powers. When Cameroon instituted a case against Nigeria in 1994, Cameroon was inadvertently internationalizing the boundary and territorial dispute with Nigeria. Apparently, Nigeria was hamstrung in a legal dilemma in retrospect because she honored a number of pre-independence agreements inherited from Britain by virtue of the Exchange Notes of October 1, 1960, between Nigeria and the United Kingdom on Treaty obligations. By implication, Nigeria was recognizing the Bakassi peninsula as forming part of the Cameroon. It appears the boundary dispute between the two countries was basically a dispute of right with right; hence a crude piece of ethical analysis should have been involved.
Since this was not the case, the question of the precise status accorded self-determination remains a matter of international politics rather than mere legal principle. Based on the foregoing, therefore, we accept our hypotheses and reach the conclusion that although the ruling was based on facts presented by both parties, the conduct of plebiscite that will take into cognisance the human rights of the Bakassi citizens would have been more effective in the settlement of the dispute.
RECOMMENDATIONS
In view of the above findings and conclusion, we make the following recommendations:
- All boundary disputes, especially in Africa, should be handled according to the United Nations recommendation in its Charter (UN, 1945: Article 33, Sub-section I). According to this, parties to any dispute, the continuation of which is likely to endanger peaceful and warmly relationship should resort to the principles of negotiation, inquiry, mediation, conciliation, and judicial settlement, under the auspices of regional agencies or arrangements or other peaceful means of their own choice. ·
- The welfare and improvement in the standard of living of the Bakassi citizens should be of utmost priority to both the Nigerian and Cameroonian government because they are entitled to their fundamental human rights no matter the situation. ·
- A sub-regional commission that will chart a course of harmonious relations among Africa states, especially between Nigeria and Cameroon is also needed.
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