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Has Tafawa Balewa House foreclosed Bakassi killings? -By Tunji Ajibade

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Tafawa Balewa

 

There was the news that some Nigerians were killed in Bakassi not long ago. Cameroonian soldiers were reported to be behind it. One newspaper had the news this way on July 7, 2017: “About 97 Nigerians are feared killed as Cameroon Gendermes allegedly attacked residents of Bakassi over failure to pay a N100,000 boat levy. It was learnt that the attackers sacked mainly Nigerians from Akwa Ibom, Cross River and Ondo states. Many others escaped at midnight with their fishing boats and arrived at Ikang in Bakassi and Ibaka in Akwa Ibom.” What had transpired since the newspaper came out with this had made me wonder about what we report, how we report and the foreclosure of the issues involved.

There was an editorial on the same topic in another newspaper on July 18, 2017. It reads in part: “Reports that ninety seven Nigerians were killed by Cameroon gendarmes when they allegedly attacked residents of Bakassi over failure to pay N100,000 boat levy (are) alarming to say the least.” Comments such as these weren’t limited to newspapers. The online community arrested, prosecuted, judged and sentenced both the Nigerian and Cameroonian governments against the backdrop of tense Nigeria-Cameroon relations.

The House of Representatives also intervened, making its Committee on Foreign Affairs to investigate the alleged killings. I had been following the events surrounding the matter, and characteristically I had refrained from commenting until I was sure of the facts. I had looked out for what Tafawa Balewa House in Abuja had to say. Initially, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Geoffrey Onyeama, and his staff were reported by a newspaper not to have responded to enquiries made on the matter. It had since become clear that the minister was following protocol in ascertaining what happened, if it happened. The earliest thing I knew Onyeama did was to summon the Cameroonian ambassador to his office. Silence had followed as the ambassador had to contact his home government. He did not only issue a denial later, but the Cameroonian president sent a delegation to Abuja. The delegation denied the allegation too. Tafawa Balewa House also investigated but found no one who said he lost any relation among those allegedly killed. Government officials went to Cross River State and there were no dead bodies as evidence. The House of Representatives got the same feedback.

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The fact however is that Bakassi residents had in the past experienced ill-treatment from officials in our neighbouring country. This isn’t my focus here. That a news report of such magnitude, one laden with landmines, makes it to the pages of a respected newspapers is. I’m not writing on the Bakassi issue or the Nigerian-Cameroon relations for the first time. When water was released from dams in Cameroon and our people in the Benue valley suffered from devastating flooding in 2012, I wrote about it. I had wondered then why the Cameroonians did not warn our government as they had agreed. One reader even sent me a rude email for showing my displeasure. Mainly, his point was that I shouldn’t have criticised the Cameroonians regarding anything because that country was home to thousands of Nigerians (excluding Bakassi residents). But typical of many uncouth Nigerians that we now breed, he adds at the end of his email, “…see your big lips.” As I’m inclined to do, pointedly calling the attention of a rude person to what I think of him by totally ignoring his insults, I had responded thus: “Thank you so much for getting in touch. Much appreciated.” I recall that a few days after my piece on the release of water from Cameroon’s dams, officials in that country had put in the public space a piece of information to the effect that they did warn Nigerian officials about the course of action they were about to take. I haven’t come across anything in our national space that had contradicted the Cameroonians.

There had also been another occasion when I had a lengthy talk with our officials who had the facts about the status of the Bakassi Peninsula at the National Boundary Commission. I wrote about it (The PUNCH, April 24, 2015), and their submission was that the peninsula as a piece of land never belonged to Nigeria. Yes, our people resided there, but it was never ours based on records. It was not included in Nigeria in 1960. When General Sani Abacha had issues with the Cameroonians in the mid-1990s, he created the Peninsula as a local government area in Nigeria simply because our people were there, the NBC officials had explained. I noticed at the time that I didn’t get a single response on that piece to contradict what our boundary officials who should know told me. I point this out because I find it amazing that we make so much out of the Bakassi issue when the fact remains that we don’t own that piece of territory. We still discuss that area based on supposed injustice done to Nigeria by the International Court of Justice that rules in favour of Cameroon. Is there truly an injustice here? I have friends from the Cross River axis, highly educated, but I’ve been surprised by the sentiments with which they defend Bakassi as Nigeria’s territory. I had engaged them in intellectual debates over the matter; what I got were arguments that were nothing more than sentiments. This same disposition forms the backdrop to every piece of news item that we generate about Bakassi. I’m surprised that journalists who should avail themselves of the fact on records also play to the gallery, the report about 97 murdered Nigerians being the latest example.

No doubt, our people have been maltreated in the wake of the taking over of Bakassi by the Cameroonians. They deserve better treatment even if they have to leave that land. I mean they deserve better treatment from both the Cameroonian and Nigerian governments. How did we handle the welfare of our people such that years after the ICJ ruling their condition remained traumatic? Abuja agreed to let the peninsula go, but the people who were to move out had not been properly settled ever since. Does this speak to something about us as a nation and how we handle the welfare of our people? Yes. However, the latest false news item has its risks for the nation and it’s the reason I think we shouldn’t let it pass unchallenged. The news could have led to shootings between the armed forces of both nations, the kind that regularly breaks out between India and Pakistan at the border. Tension was created after the news broke. Nigerians were angry at their government. Our lawmakers were incensed. Tafawa Balewa House summoned the Cameroonian ambassador. Our defence formation must have been on edge in that general area, waiting for any eventuality. Emotions of people from that part of the country had negatively shot up one thousand per cent wherever they resided across the world. Even without the facts, they would have been eager to send home anything they could to organise a defence of their people if Abuja would not. Some militants in that area with eyes on vengeance might have taken up arms to invade villages on the other side, generating more tension between the two nations.

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Bakassi is an emotive issue for all Nigerians. That means it remains dangerously tricky, capable of igniting anything anytime. Our leaders at every level shouldn’t toy with it anymore. They should take concrete steps and put to rest the matter of these displaced Nigerians. I call on my constituency to exercise more caution before it publishes this kind of story in the future. But I want Tafawa Balewa House to investigate where the latest rumour of killings started from. If it’s silent, choosing to not go beyond repudiating it, I worry that it creates room for a situation in which unforeseen occurrences would have taken place in that area long before it took action, following diplomatic protocol as it had had to do that time. In these days of fake news, it seems to me some elements feed journalists with the false claim of killings to achieve some unwholesome motive. Whatever that is, Tafawa Balewa House and other relevant agencies should find out in order to prevent further disaffection between the peoples of two neighbouring nations.

 

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