Bakassi: The Lingering Question

A recent report that about 3,200 Bakassi
returnees were still living in refugee
camps within Nigeria is nothing short of a scandal.
According to the report, Senator Florence Ita-Giwa had indicated that the displaced people, including men, women and children were desperate to return to their respective communities.
“I am again appealing to the Federal Government to urgently resettle the 3,200 Bakassi people still in refugee camps. These people have identified and are able to know where they are from originally. So, they cannot continue to be refugees in their country…”, she said.
Indeed, given the roles expected of the Federal and Cross River State Governments, the displaced persons of Bakassi should not be singing the same old song years after the implementation of the Green Tree judgement.
The International Court of Justice or World Court had ceded Bakassi Peninsular to Cameroun in its October 2002 ruling, ending decades of dispute between Nigeria and her Francophone neighbor over the oil-rich Bakassi.
The judgement, nevertheless, gave inhabitants of Bakassi up till August 14, 2013 to decide whether to remain in the territory as Camerounian citizens or relocate to Nigeria.
But just as those who opted to stay back were said to be complaining of consant harassment and intimidation by Camerounian security forces over tax default dating back to 1993 when Nigerian troops took effective control of the area, their counterparts who made bold to return are yet to be reintegrated into the Nigerian society.
The situation actually raises questions because of the consistent lackluster interest taken on the Bakassi matter from the beginning. To express their disappointment, the people of Bakassi had, at a time, threatened to seek self rule.
Only recently, and in spite of the existence of a United Nations-backed Mixed Commission on Bakassi, officials of Cameroun were alleged to have carried out unilateral delineation of the boundary where more Nigerian communities were carved into Cameroun. So far, only the Nigerian Senate has promised to investigate the matter.

The Tide is very worried that the Bakassi returnees are not getting the attention they deserve from their country. In the first place, some hard facts that could have facilitated justice at the World Court were not canvassed at the trial, while the window for appeal was also not explored at least, to satisfy Nigerians that the government did all it possibly could in the matter.
We are also worried that the ordinary Nigerian and communities have failed to integrate the returnees, even when a lot of them know no other place as home other than Bakassi where they were born.
The Tide believes that people constitute a major asset of any country and therefore deserve to be treated with dignity, especially when the fate they suffer stems from the lack of sufficient interest on the part of successive governments in Nigeria.
It is simply not enough to put some returnee families in school premises and continue to supply them with food, clothing and toiletries for close to two years now. The people cannot continue to live on such daily hand-outs; they need permanent resettlement. After all, President Olusegun Obasanjo had, immediately after the court verdict, promised that new settlements would be built for former Bakassi residents in Akpabuyo Local Government Area of Cross River State where they are currently camped as refugees.
We, therefore, expect that the Federal Government, Cross River State Government and even the UN will ensure that the Bakassi problem does not continue to break the people and glorify destitution in the country.
Finally, we cannot fail to note the love of these returnees for Nigeria. What they have gone through in the few years should have been enough for them to declare for Cameroun or go back and seek self rule. The least Nigeria can do is to stand up for her people and quickly too.