Nigeria declared on Friday that it would not go back on the final handover to Cameroon on Aug. 14 of the oil-rich Bakassi Peninsula on the maritime border between the two countries.
Minister of Justice Michael Aondoakaa said the handover would go ahead despite an Abuja court the previous day issuing an order restraining the government from doing so.
The order, he insisted, was not binding on the government.
“It was not only confusing, but it was an aberration,” he said.
“The status quo that I know is that there is a judgment of the International Court of Justice [ICJ], which the Nigerian government had partly implemented and which we must completely implement,” he said.
“The status quo that is existing in law is the final judgment of the ICJ, which was served on the Nigerian government and which held that Bakassi belongs to Cameroon. The ICJ judgment is binding on us and we are not going back on its implementation,” he said.
The Abuja court on Thursday issued an interim injunction at the request of a number of local residents of the peninsula stopping the Aug. 14 final ceding.
In October 2002, the International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled that Bakassi belonged to Cameroon and should be ceded to it.
In June 2006, Nigeria signed the “Green Tree” agreement with Cameroon in New York stating that Cameroon would assume full sovereignty over the peninsula on Aug. 14.
Residents led by Emmanuel Etene and Ani Esin, former area council chairmen, sought compensation of US$3.3 billion for the 206,000 people of Bakassi to allow the final ceding.
Their counsel Kayode Fasetire told the court on Thursday that Bakassi people were not challenging the judgment of the ICJ, but were challenging the modalities for its implementation.
“We know that we are bound by the judgment of the ICJ, but the Nigerian government did not submit the Green Tree agreement to parliament for ratification as constitutionally required. Nigeria has not done what it is supposed to do before implementing the agreement,” Fasetire said.
The people of Bakassi also demand to be settled in an area of their choice before the final ceding. Their “New Bakassi” new home, they say, is inhabited by people hostile to Bakassi “refugees.”
New Bakassi, they say, is landlocked and ideal for farmers — but not for fishermen like them.
They allege that Cameroonian authorities, in whose hands the Nigerian government left their fate, had a history of imposing undue taxes, molesting, assaulting and killing Nigerian citizens in Bakassi.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF WAR: Ursula von der Leyen said that Europe was in Kyiv because ‘it is not only the destiny of Ukraine that is at stake. It’s Europe’s destiny’ A dozen leaders from Europe and Canada yesterday visited Ukraine’s capital to mark the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion in a show of support for Kyiv by some of its most important backers. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were among the visitors greeted at the railway station by Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha and the president’s chief of staff Andrii Yermak. Von der Leyen wrote on social media that Europe was in Kyiv “because Ukraine is in Europe.” “In this fight for survival, it is not only the destiny of Ukraine that is
RSS