Betrayal of Too Trusting a People. The UN, the UK and the Trust Territory of the Southern Cameroons: The UN, the UK and the Trust Territory of the Southern Cameroons

9. The Bakassi Equation

Chapter Nine The Bakassi Equation In March 1994 Cameroun Republic filed an Application in the Registry of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) instituting proceedings against Nigeria in respect of a dispute, which, according to the averments of Cameroun Republic, ‘relates essentially to the question of sovereignty over the Bakassi Peninsula.’ Cameroun Republic’s recital of the background facts, especially in paragraph 6 of its Application, and its account of the toponymy of Bakassi, particularly in paragraphs 15-17, contained significant distortions and portrayed a deliberate attempt at obfuscation. Paragraph 6 recited as follows: Pursuant to the relevant provisions of the Treaty of Versailles and then of the United Nations Charter, Cameroon was placed successively under the mandate and trusteeship systems, the mandatory powers and thereafter the administering authorities being in both case France and the United Kingdom. These two regimes embodied international recognition of the frontier between Cameroon and Nigeria and Camerounese sovereignty over the Bakassi Peninsula. The ‘Camerounity’ of the Peninsula was confirmed by the results of the plebiscite conducted under the auspices of the United Nations on 11 and 12 February 1961, on the occasion of which the nationals of the former Southern Cameroons chose to be incorporated into Cameroon. This passage invites a number of observations. First, “Cameroon” is used deceptively as a polysemous denotation, in an effort to obfuscate the identity of the territory being referred to. Second, the erroneous impression is given, to anyone who is not aware of the true situation, that a certain unitary colonial territory known as “Cameroon” was placed under joint Anglo-French international tutelage. As already shown in an earlier chapter, the truth is that by mid-1916 German Kamerun had ceased to exist as a unitary colonial territory following its conquest by British and French 130 Betrayal of Too Trusting a People forces and its subsequent partition between Britain and France along the Simon-Milner Line. The partition was confirmed by the League of Nations when separate mandates were granted to Britain and France over their respective parts, namely British Cameroons and French Cameroun. It is the British Cameroons, not French Cameroun that has a frontier to the west with Nigeria from Lake Chad to the Atlantic Ocean. The Bakassi Peninsula is located in the British Southern Cameroons where it shares a maritime border with Nigeria. Third, there is an attempt by Cameroun Republic to befog the identity of two separate territories, the Southern Cameroons, of which the Bakassi Peninsula is geographically, legally and politically an integral part; and French Cameroun Republic, which has no border at all with Nigeria at the Bakassi Peninsula. Sovereignty is not acquired through myths, such as the myth of a so-called “camerounité” (whatever that actually means), or through homophones, such as the similarly pronounced but differently spelt names of the two distinct countries, the Southern Cameroons and Cameroun Republic. Fourth, the UN-sponsored plebiscite in the Southern Cameroons took place on 11 February 1961. The plebiscite did not “confirm”, and could not have “confirmed”, Cameroun Republic’s alleged title to the Bakassi Peninsula because that country never at any time had title to it in the first place. Only that which already exists can be confirmed. Fifth, citizens of the Southern Cameroons never voted for incorporation into Cameroun Republic. There was no such political status option available at the plebiscite. The people could therefore not have opted for what was not available. The plebiscite vote was primarily a vote to achieve independence and secondarily a vote to join Cameroun Republic in a federal political association. Had the Southern Cameroons declined to go along with the “joining” that fact would not have entailed the invalidation of the Independence vote and the indefinite continuation of the trusteeship. Cameroun Republic may have wished that the Southern Cameroons be incorporated into its territory. But wishes are not horses. The averments in paragraphs 15-17 were a strenuous attempt by Cameroun Republic to claim indirectly a purported historic sovereignty over the Bakassi Peninsula. A very strained effort is made to link the Peninsula with a locality in the territory of 131 The Bakassi Equation Cameroun Republic some 300 kilometres away. The fantastic claim is made that the ancestry of the native inhabitants of Bakassi Peninsula is traceable to a native community in Cameroun Republic called “the Sawa”, that the place names of the different localities in the Peninsula are in the Duala-language (a...