Bakassi: Or the Politics of Exclusion and Occupation?

Chapter 1. Backgrounding Bakassi Post-Conflict Confidence-Building and Peace-Building Strategies

1 Chapter 1 Backgrounding Bakassi Post-Conflict ConfidenceBuilding and Peace-Building Strategies A Lost Conflict for a Lost Peace? The Bakassi post-conflict management strategies, unlike most of the regular conflicts in Africa, is of a very unique kind, with regard to its causes; but it is quite critical when it comes to evaluating the strategies set in place to handle the post conflict disaster, destructions and to attend to the needs of the post-conflict victims. Very vulnerable among the post conflict victims are the displaced populations, the women, children and the aged who constitute the most vulnerable stakeholders. The natural and the artificial cultural environments constitute the victims on whom the post-conflict logistics and the post war hangover take a hard erosive toll. The confusion and hullabaloo raised by all sorts of peace-keeping agents and advocates tend to create room for scamming by those who are interested to make profits out of the post-conflict mismanagement loopholes than for applying strategies to solving the conflict resurgentlag by initiating and establishing lasting and sustainable confidencebuilding and peace-building structures and systems to facilitate the process. This observation comes from the author’s personal experience and participatory observation during the past five years, 2004-2009; and interaction with post war victims and some of the agents and advocates of Bakassi rehabilitation; where the strategies for crosscultural psychological healing, confidence-building and peace-building are very much neglected by the State and State agents. It is no secret that since the Bakassi post-conflict talks and arrangements between Nigeria and Cameroon, Bakassi has become not only an ideographic pre-occupation and projection of some forward looking Cameroonians who like to idealise a new concept of Cameroonity. It has also become an Eldorado and a place for seizing native land from displaced populations and making fast money by State officials in the ministries, and other business men and women. 2 Most State officials, in order to reduce the stress of riding in a flying boat propelled by a 75HP engine, prefer to stop at Mundemba to make per-diem claims for a Bakassi they never actually visited, except by hear-say or from Radio one battery. And when the Governor of South West Region visits Bakassi for the first time it becomes a sensational issue for news makers because the waiting has been too long. But the irony is that instead of the native Bakassi people stealing the show it is rather the governor who does, since Cameroonians are used to patronizing than in giving people their participatory freedom to define their needs strategies for attaining their self-actualization. The arrival in the Ndian Division, and especially in Bakassi, of unscrupulous sex workers, the military and all migrant workers and businessmen and women from as far as Yaoundé, Douala, Bafoussam or Bamenda, also contribute to the high risk of health and hygiene hazards, food and water scarcity and insecurity in the post war zone. As duly informed by some frightened informants, a war victim cannot complain of the unsafety of the virtually harassed women and young girls who are hushed to speak out; but are financially motivated to take pride in leasing with the armed men in uniform as bodyguards for their safety. Sometimes married women express fear of becoming targets of unwanted familiarity that mentally harass their men who must make do with the situation of the virtual rape of their privacies and spaces of safety that is no more safe enough for normal human beings to live in. When Marafa Diggi, the Nigerian representative of the Bakassi Mixed Commission (Yerima Kini Nsom, 2009) “accuses Cameroon of stalling the Greentree Accord…and expressing his disappointment about the harassment of Nigerians in Bakassi” he is only touching the tip of the iceberg. When he expressed the urgent need for a mixed commission observer group to visit Bakassi and assess the situation there he was basing his suggestion on reports and fears from the native inhabitants of the peninsula when he said: “Pockets of disaffection coming from the peninsula leave the government of Nigeria and Nigerians resident in Bakassi wondering whether the full implementation of the Greentree Accord was concluded after handing over of Bakassi to Cameroon Republic on August 14 2008.” 3 It is this hibernating fear that urges the Native Bakassi postconflict victims to speak out much with zest and vigour when they sense there are much...