Okoi Obono-Obla|29 March 2016|12:35pm
I don't like to praise myself and recount what I have done for the State in regards to Bakassi. Let me say that from 2002 (when the International Court of Justice in the Hague delivered its Judgment over the sovereignty of Bakassi Peninsula in favour of Cameroon against Nigeria) till date I have being the lone voice in the country against what I consider to be an egregious and serious miscarriage of Justice.
On the 28th October 2002 (few days after the judgment was delivered), I wrote a classical article in the Sunday Guardian Newspaper condemning the judgment. This article was later cited in the Chinese Journal of International Law by an United Kingdom based Nigerian legal scholar teaching in Oxford University while reading on Bakassi and international Law.
In August 2007 I filed a law suit in the Federal High Court in Calabar on behalf of some aggrieved indigenes of Bakassi challenging the constitutionality of the Green Tree Agreement and the handing over of Bakassi Pennisula to Cameroon. I did the case pro bono (did not charge fees). However the former Governor Imoke and his Attorney General Attah Ochinke rather than support the case vehemently opposed it and even went to the extent to procure a former Director General of Cross River State Emergency Relief Agency to come to Court to give evidence against the Plaintiffs.
The Court relied on the evidence of this witness to dismiss the case in a judgment delivered on the 21st February 2016. When we were told that some team of surveyors from the United Nations had come to the State in 2013 to start the demarcation of the so called Maritime boundary between Nigeria and Cameroon, I mobilised an army of youths from Ugep to travel to Ikang to demonstrate and stop the surveyors . The former Deputy Governor Efiok Cobham and some highly placed officials can attest to this. I also filed a suit in the Federal High Court Abuja on behalf of some highly placed indigenes of the State to stop the survey exercise also in 2013. You ask Hon. Nkoyo Toyo and Senator Bassey Ewa Henshaw.
In October 2012 I appeared on AIT along with Hon. Nkoyo Toyo and the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, Hon. Ukeje to criticise vehemently the failure of the Federal government under former President Jonathan to apply to the International Court of Justice to review its Judgment over Bakassi in view of fresh evidence that Northern Cameroon never had boundary with Bakassi. Recall that Northern Cameroon was a French territory but in 1961 it merged with British Southern Cameroon to form the Federal United Republic of Cameroon. However the treaty was never registered with the United Nations secretariat as required by International Law. I also got in touch with the President of Southern Cameroon Liberation Front to visit former Governor Imoke to hand over documents showing that Bakassi was never part of Northern Cameroon hence the judgment of the International Court of Justice that was premised on a purported treaty signed in 1913 between Great Britian and Germany was invalid.
I have written numerous articles criticising the judgment of the International Court of Justice over Bakassi. I can beat my chest and boast that I have done more than any other Cross Riverian nay Nigerian to get the attention of the public on the injustice dealt the people of Bakassi by the judgment of the International Court justice and the subsequent hand over of its sovereignty to Cameroon.
Okoi Obono-Obla
Is a Right Activist & Legal Practitioner
