2.2 Concepto general
2.2.1 Concepto de tercerización utilizado en Brasil
The Cameroon-Nigeria border has been a source of regular conflict between the post-colonial Cameroonian and Nigerian states (Anene 1961; Weladji 1974-75; Nwokedi 1984-85; Owolabi 1991; Ngoh 2001). Similar to other colonially negotiated boundaries, the border, and especially the maritime border, has been neither unambiguously defined nor satisfactorily demarcated (Asiwaju 1998). Sovereignty over the Bakassi Peninsula has been a major bone of contention in the long history of Cameroon-Nigeria border disputes.
The Bakassi Peninsula is an area measuring approximately 1,000 km2 that is made up of mangrove swamps and half-submerged islands protruding into the Bight of Bonny (formerly known as the Bight of Biafra). It is part of the Ndian Division of the South West Province of Anglophone Cameroon, with a population estimated at between 250,000 and 300,000. The vast majority are Efik- speaking Nigerians who eke out an existence as fishermen. The peninsula lacks basic infrastructural provisions: there is no electricity, no potable water (this has to be fetched from the mainland), no roads and few educational or health facilities. At first sight, it seems surprising that such a neglected and unpromising area should have excited such attention from the governments of Cameroon and Nigeria over the past thirty years, to the point where full-scale war has at times appeared imminent (Anene 1970; Cornwell 2006).
Before the scramble for Africa, Bakassi seems to have been part of the ancient Kingdom of Calabar. During the scramble, the Obong or King of Old Calabar signed a Treaty of Protection with the Queen of England on 10 September 1884. Despite the Obong’s protest, however, the British eventually ceded the Bakassi Peninsula to the German Kamerun Protectorate in 1913 through a series of bilateral treaties and other legal instruments.
Following the First World War, the erstwhile German Kamerun Protectorate (1884-1916) was partitioned between the British and French victors, first as ‘mandates’ under the League of Nations
and later as ‘trusts’ under the United Nations. The British territory was much smaller than the French, comprising about a fifth of the total area and population of the former German colony. It consisted of two narrow non-contiguous regions bordering Nigeria and stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to Lake Chad. The southern part was christened Southern Cameroons, and the northern part became known as Northern Cameroons. Bakassi became part of the Southern Cameroons (Konings & Nyamnjoh 2003).
A complicating factor for future territorial claims on Bakassi was that the Southern and Northern Cameroons were administered as integral parts of Nigeria. As a result, there was no real border between the British Cameroons and Nigeria and this promoted a free flow of goods and labour between the two territories. During this period, a large number of Nigerians, notably of Igbo and Ibibio origin, migrated to the Southern Cameroons where they came to dominate the local economy, a development that was strongly resented by the Southern Cameroonian population and exploited by regional politicians during the nationalist struggles after the Second World War (Konings 2005c). This shared colonial history encouraged the Nigerian post-colonial state to lay claim to the Bakassi Peninsula.
In the run-up to independence in the late 1950s, the United Nations asked Britain to organise a plebiscite in the British Cameroons to ascertain the wishes of the local population as to which country it would like to be part of following independence. While the Northern Cameroons decided to join the independent Federation of Nigeria, the Southern Cameroons decided on 11 February 1961 to join the already-independent Republic of Cameroon (the former French trust territory), which was to become the Federal Republic of Cameroon on 1 October 1961 (Konings & Nyamnjoh 2003). It is worth noting here that there were 21 polling stations on the Bakassi Peninsula during the UN-organised plebiscite in the Southern Cameroons. Evidently, the international community at that time was in no doubt about the fact that Bakassi was part of the Southern Cameroons and that, following reunification, it would become part of the newly established Federal Republic of Cameroon. Significantly, sovereignty over Bakassi itself was not an issue between Cameroon and Nigeria for some time after independence (International Court of Justice 2002). Several Nigerian authorities
and scholars publicly confirmed Cameroonian sovereignty over Bakassi, and Nigerian maps had the peninsula marked as part of Cameroonian territory right up until the 1990s (Essombo 1995; Mbome 1996; Mgbale 2001; Olagunju 2009). It was only after the discovery of large amounts of oil in the Bakassi area, albeit a decade after independence, that Nigeria started publicly claiming ownership of the peninsula.
Initially, the post-colonial Nigerian and Cameroonian states were more concerned with demarcating the colonially negotiated borders than with sovereignty over Bakassi. One of the major issues was the maritime border between the two countries, which had only been vaguely defined in the Anglo-German agreements of 1913.
From the mid-1960s onwards, a newly created Joint Cameroon- Nigeria Commission tried to resolve the boundary dispute, but very little was achieved. The agreements concluded by the two governments were either contested or denounced outright. One of the principal factors that hampered any peaceful solution was the mutual mistrust shown by the leaders, something that dated back to pre-reunification days. The territorial losses suffered during the UN-organised plebiscites in the British Cameroons had created deep and long-lasting bitterness. Against the expectations of the Francophone Cameroonian and Nigerian leaders, Southern Cameroons then voted for reunification with Francophone Cameroon, and Northern Cameroons for integration with Nigeria.
The Cameroonian President Ahmadou Ahidjo was particularly aggrieved by the loss of the British Northern Cameroons, which was of the same ethnic and religious extraction as his home region, namely the northern part of Francophone Cameroon. Instead of strengthening his position, the plebiscite results appeared to weaken it. He strongly suspected that the Southern Cameroons vote for reunification would cement an alliance between the Southern Cameroons elite and the ethnically related opposition in the southwestern part of Francophone Cameroon (Konings & Nyamnjoh 2003). He accused the British-Nigerian colonial administration of having manipulated the elections in the British Northern Cameroons to its own advantage and took the matter to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague and to the United Nations, but lost his case. For several years, he declared the
anniversary of that verdict as a day of mourning, to the displeasure of Nigeria’s leaders. Ahidjo was also reluctant to improve relations with his neighbour because he was inclined to perceive the close cultural and historical connections between Nigeria and Anglophone Cameroon as a potential threat to reunification and to a strong central state and national unity. He was particularly worried that the connection might encourage secession among the Anglophone population, all the more so because there was a growing dissatisfaction among the Anglophone minority with Francophone hegemonic tendencies following reunification (Konings 2005c).
Nevertheless, Ahidjo’s support of the Gowon regime during the Biafran civil war did bring about a temporary improvement in bilateral relations. This led to an intensification of border talks, which eventually resulted in the 1975 Maroua Declaration that delimited the maritime boundary and recognised Cameroonian sovereignty over Bakassi (Owolabi 1991; Mbome 1996). The overthrow of the Gowon regime in a military coup five weeks after concluding this accord was clearly connected with the terms of the agreement. The new Nigerian leader, Mohammed Murtala, falsely accused Gowon of having handed over Bakassi, which he claimed to be Nigerian property, to Cameroon as a gift in gratitude for the role played by Ahidjo in the Nigerian civil war, and he refused to ratify the agreement. He reportedly threatened that ‘rather than accept the outrageous 1975 award, Nigeria would go to war if the Cameroonians refused to negotiate’ (Nwokedi 1984-85: 51). Although Murtala died in an unsuccessful coup just a year later, his successor, General Olusegun Obasanjo, held the same opinion. This new Nigerian stance infuriated Ahidjo, who accused Nigeria of acting in bad faith, and he subsequently declined to enter into any further negotiations with the Nigerian authorities as long as he remained head of state. Bilateral relations hardly improved under Ahidjo’s successor, Paul Biya, mainly because of continuing border problems. Following these events, sovereignty over the Bakassi Peninsula became more of an issue between the Cameroonian and Nigerian post-colonial states; and tensions built up on both sides before finally culminating in armed conflict. Bakassi has become of enormous economic and geo-strategic importance due to not only its rich hydrocarbon and fish resources but also its pivotal interest in
controlling access to the port of Calabar, which is currently being developed as Nigeria’s Export-Processing Zone and the Eastern Command Headquarters of the Nigerian navy (Asiwaju 1998: 254; Ngang 2010).
The first serious skirmishes between Nigerian and Cameroonian forces occurred on 16 May 1981 and brought the two states to the brink of war. Three Nigerian patrol boats came under fire in the Bakassi area and five Nigerian soldiers were killed. Nigeria’s demands for an apology and compensation were initially refused, and relations between the two countries took an ominous turn for the worse. In July 1981, however, Cameroon undertook to pay compensation and tensions eased, with plaudits going to Nigeria’s President Shagari for his restraint and for containing his hawkish military. The incident led to the resurrection of the joint commission and discussions on the border dispute were officially reopened (Cornwell 2006: 51-52).
These discussions had little effect, however, as the Nigerian inhabitants of Bakassi continued to protest to the Nigerian authorities in Cross River State about the actions of the Cameroonian gendarmes who were demanding excessive payments for fishing licences. Later raids by the gendarmes were evidently more violent, involving looting, rape and the destruction of fishing equipment. And then in May 1991, the gendarmes entered nine fishing villages, hoisted their national flag and announced that they were renaming the settlements. They also promised that health and educational facilities would be provided, though they demanded the payment of taxes. The new Nigerian military leader, General Sani Abacha, then claimed that the Nigerian state had to protect the Nigerian population on Bakassi and ordered Nigerian troops to occupy part of the peninsula on 21 December 1993. In response, Cameroonian troops attacked the Nigerian occupying force, which resulted in several deaths and large-scale destruction of property. The fighting continued intermittently and both sides increased the quantity and quality of their weapons in the disputed zone. Ngniman (1996) gives a detailed report of all the military events that took place between 1993 and 1996 and, in February 1996, the Nigerian forces clashed again with Cameroonian troops.
A number of initiatives were taken to prevent the dispute from escalating and to bring the two parties to the negotiating table. These included pressure from France which was motivated by its determination to safeguard its interests in both states (Mgbale 2001: 175), mediation by the Togolese President Eyadéma, and the adoption of resolutions by the United Nations and the Organisation of African Unity, apparently with little success. On 29 March 1994, the Cameroonian government filed an application with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to institute proceedings against Nigeria for using violence to contest Cameroon’s sovereignty over the Bakassi Peninsula. On 5 September 2002, just a month before the court’s verdict was due, the UN Secretary- General Kofi Annan and the two heads of state, Olusegun Obasanjo and Paul Biya, met in Paris in the presence of the French President Jacques Chirac and the two African leaders pledged to comply with the court’s verdict, irrespective of its ruling.