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Chapter Six Refutation of the ‘History’ Thesis As a trust territory, the Southern Cameroons possessed international status and a degree of international personality. These were underpinned by secure frontiers, well delimited by boundary treaties.1 The status of the Southern Cameroons as a territory firmly on the path of sovereign statehood was further strengthened when it achieved self-government status in 1954 and became a state in statu nascendi in 1960 with its own separate constitution, ‘The Southern Cameroons Constitution Order in Council’. Its national sovereignty was in abeyance waiting to revive and rest on the new state at the moment of its independence. The Southern Cameroons had, during that time, capacity to conclude various types of international agreements, since the period of self-government of a territory is often characterised by its capacity to conclude such agreements.2 It is partly for this reason that in interpreting the second plebiscite question the British Colonial Secretary, Mr. Iain Macleod, stated in October 1960, that arrangements for a future Cameroon Federal Republic would be worked out after the plebiscite ‘by a conference consisting of representative delegations of equal status from the Republic and the Southern Cameroons.’ Cameroun Republic did not contest this formula. It did not make any reservation to it. On the contrary, it fully endorsed the formula on 2 December 1960, thereby acknowledging the fact that both countries were, after the plebiscite, legally equal in terms of political status (i.e. independent countries). Indeed, in 1959 and throughout 1960, Ahidjo denied on several occasions any hidden intentions of annexing the Southern Cameroons, stressing that both sides would carry out negotiations for what he called and persisted in calling “reunification” on a footing of strict equality. In a foreword to an official publication by Yaounde in late 1961 Ahidjo wrote: ‘When the solemn re-unification of the two Cameroons took place on 1st October 1961, it was necessary to endow this re-united country with a Constitution adapted to the Federal System agreed upon between the two sister States.’3 70 Betrayal of Too Trusting a People The July 1961 Foumban constitutional meeting was therefore a meeting of two independent states, the Southern Cameroons having in contemplation of law achieved independence by its vote to that effect five months earlier, on February 11, though the effective date of that independence was postponed by the UN to 1 October 1961. Ahidjo’s implied claim that the Southern Cameroons delegation at Foumban was inferior in status was merely political hot air and had no legal basis.4 For, in a stunning admission, as indicated in the preceding paragraph, Ahidjo later spoke of “the Federal System agreed upon between the two sister States.”5 The pre-plebiscite agreement between the Southern Cameroons and Cameroun Republic concluded in 1960 was, arguably, predicated on the fact that the former was possessed of some degree of international personality, at least for the purpose of the matter at hand. Object and subject of international law cannot conclude a treaty; but they can validly conclude an agreement expressed as governed by an agreed municipal law. In the instant case, however, the pre-plebiscite agreement did not state any agreed municipal law that was to govern it, the inescapable implication being that the agreement was governed by and binding under international law as one concluded between a subject and at least a qualified subject of international law. It was the future federation that was to be governed by domestic law, that domestic law being the federal constitution that was itself still to be drafted and adopted. If, therefore, Cameroun Republic concluded the pre-plebiscite agreement with the Southern Cameroons possessed of some degree of international personality, even if limited to the conclusion of said agreement, then the fact that the agreement was expressed in the form of a Joint Declaration or Communiqué can hardly be of any consequence, except to suggest that the agreement was concluded with less solemnity. In the eyes of international law, the nomenclature of an agreement between international persons binding in virtue of the maxim pacta sunt servanda is immaterial. For example, the Anglo-Chinese Agreement in 1984 regarding Hong Kong took the form of a Joint Declaration to which were adjoined three annexes. Admittedly, not all agreements between subjects of international law are legally binding instruments. Some agreements though they may exercise an influence in international politics, may be merely statements of commonly held principles or objectives or policies; [3.144.253.161] Project...

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