Bakassi: Or the Politics of Exclusion and Occupation?

Chapter 11. Negotiating Contiguities in the Agent Based Directed System in the Bakassi Post-Conflict Political Economic Space

331 Chapter 11 Negotiating Contiguities in the Agent Based Directed System in the Bakassi Post-Conflict Political Economic Space Agent Based Directed Systems In studying agent directed systems in social sciences, it must be borne in mind that each agent is a vector of characteristics pertinent to its structure and essential components with relatively corresponding highlighted images and suppressed shadows. The accommodation of agents within any given system would depend on the cross-cultural coherence and adaptation to, or incoherence and rejection of, the system. Structurally each agent has its own internal dynamics and this makes it impossible to predict the behavioural factors that can result into conflict, especially due to incompatibility of contiguous agents. These conflicts jeopardise the harmonious functioning of the ecosystem of the natural and cultural resources that are on-goingly negotiating their contiguities in any given space and time. The crosscultural incoherence of the incompatible Eurocentric colonial cartographic systems that were forced upon the African classical systems of ethno-nationalities and ethno-sovereignties is at the base of the Bakassi conflict. This conflict is more of a cross-cultural psychological identity, as well as a Cartographic Trans-National interpretation and appreciation of the dominant paradigms of the imposed Eurocentric Imaging of the Colonial and Neo-Colonial Nation-States on the suppressed and Shadowed-Imaging of the African Classical Systems of Pluri-National Ethnic-States and EthnicAutonomies . The researcher is interested identifying and evaluating the various actors in the established agent based system of Bakassi in their on-going sustainable negotiations of the contiguities within the socioanthropological participatory state-crafting and sustainable distribution of resources and services, for the enhancement of good governance and the quality of life of the stakeholders within the State enterprise engineering of policies and strategies for development. 332 Politics of Exclusions and Laws of Occupation The agents of the Bakassi conflict, like any other conflict in Africa are as numerous and dynamic as there are agents and sub-agents that have contributed, and are still contributing and will contribute even to a more uncontrollable explosion, if the right techniques in conflict management and resolution, as well as enhancing confidence building strategies are not put into place. In an agent based systemic analysis perspective therefore, the Bakassi set up appears to be more complex than it has been assumed and judged from the facial legalist imaging point of view, which did not take into consideration the shadowing cultural and the socio-economic normative systemic approach to the resolution of the conflict. This facial legalist imaging approach is promoted by the decision of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which from an African Legal and Political Socio-Economic Anthropological perspective is accused of being imperialistic and ethno-genocidal. This accusation is stems from the imperialist international law of “ “Uti Possidetis Jus” which stipulates that the inherited colonial boundaries of the cartographic nations of Africa must remain intangible. This injunction holds on the fact that the imperial colonial agents of Africa made a tabula rasa of the various ethno-national state boundaries existing for thousands of years and over in Africa much before the European civilisations was born and hundreds of years before Arab and European colonisers came to Africa. But the agency of self-determination of a people to trace its destiny as upheld by the UNO Charter seems to limit this self-determination just to the imperialist colonial boundaries and never to the pre-colonial ethno-national boundaries of Africa. It goes without gainsaying that all contemporary conflicts in Africa are generated by agency of selfdetermination of nations within the cartographic colonial imperialist nations of Africa. The case of Biafra, Eritrea, Sudan, Southern Cameroons and Bakassi as well as many others around Africa and the world are there to testify. The forfeiture of the Ethno-national voices and self-determination rights of the peoples of Africa is manifest in the decision of the International Court of Justice which did not give consideration for the specificities and socio-cultural particularities of the agents directly 333 concerned with the decision and policy of the ICJ. The advocates for the Bakassi conflict case did not consult the local people as agents and stakeholders-beneficiaries in the decisions of the ICJ which were going to affect them directly and indirectly. They were only interested in the maintenance of the colonial imperialist Status quo boundaries of the cartographic nations of Nigeria and Cameroon. They...