In a few days time, Nigeria will finally lose its claims to the Bakassi Peninsula which the World Court awarded to Cameroun in the Land and Maritime boundary dispute between the Central African country and Nigeria based on the Anglo-German Treaty. Some historians claimed the treaty was not signed in the first place but more importantly, the German territories before the First World War were taken over by the allied forces while Germany was made to renounce all its claims to territories in Africa.

Let me now examine Cameroon’s claims. By the end of this exercise, it must be obvious to everyone, that Cameroon had no valid claim to Bakassi, and that Nigeria merely went to the court to surrender Bakassi to Cameroon, and thereby legalize an action which she had already set in motion since August 1970, and concluded with the Maroua Declaration of 1975, through craftily contrived legal instruments and “Agreements” which cannot stand the acid test of empirical analysis, and none of which was ratified by Nigeria’s legislature

NIGERIA emphasized long occupation, peaceful consolidation, and Cameroon’s acquiescence of Nigeria’s long presence at Bakassi, rather than title to the land, as proof of ownership, meaning that she acknowledged Cameroon’s ownership of Bakassi!

WHEN Prof. Walter Ofonagoro told the audience at the 12th brainstorming that the April 1893 boundary between Nigeria and Cameroon at the Rio Del Rey estuary was suppressed at the International Court of Justice to achieve a dubious aim of giving out Bakassi peninsula as war booty to Cameroon, not a few persons were convinced.

Nowa Omoigui in this third instalment argues thatthe Bakassi peninsula which was part of Camerun/Cameroon since 1913, as inherited in the League of Nations mandate after World War 1, was excised from co-administration with the Eastern region along with the rest of the Southern Cameroons at the time of Nigeria’s independence