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Bakassi: The Oron perspective

By

Edet Uno

Leader of the Oron People's Rights Movement

AS an Oron man, this analysis of my people 's viewpoints on the Bakassi issue will almost totally ignore the technicalities of the International Court's study and the verdict derived therefrom. My articulation will depart, essentially, from commonsense to the extent of its validity as the basis of all scientific discourse I will route the argument precisely and specifically to answer some pertinent questions most of them fallacious - that have been raised by some key interests on the problem. Right from the beginning some Oron indigenes knew Nigeira had a bad case. And I told this to many of my friends from other parts of the country.

If you are a member of the Oron elite or a fisherman or a labourer in one of the hundreds of Cameroonian plantations, where hundreds of thousands of Nigerians make a living from their Cameroonian landlords, the International Court of Justice judgement on the so-called Bakassi Peninsula would show how far the State can go in the pursuit of its interest. It shows the complex nakedness of 's internal dynamics and the forces governing relationships among its myriad nationalities. It shows the crass inefficiency of those who control the apparatus of power. And above all, it demonstrates the ignorance and falsehood which have been the crucial factor in Nigeria's inability to integrate as an autonomous state that, as a rule, must take all sections of the community and individuals with an objective sense of equity and justice.

I will begin by stating the unchallengeable fact that the Oron Linguistic Ethnic Nationality has the longest relationship with and is the nearest-in terms of distance to, the Republic of all the Atlantic Coast nationalities in Nigeria. Of all this group of peoples Oron is the only one that traded first with Germans before Berlin and until the First World War. What I mean here is that the former German territory (Cameroon) and Oron, were so close that German (Iyaman) traders were preferred business partners to the English (Onglish) who arrived the area later. My own late father who was born around 1860 and died in 1964 was full of praise for the Germans - the superiority of their products, their conduct of business and above all their public relations demonstrated through extra, free gifts after transactions. Being lovers of good physical appearance and strength Oron people, my father said, greatly admired these former Barbarians.

If you stand at Ibaka or Enwang facing the north (and backing the Atlantic Ocean) with your hands stretched sideways your right hand is pointing at Bakassi and your face (to the north). Abana, capital of the Efai sub-nationality used to be visible from Ibaka. This region was part of the pre-Berlin Oron sovereignty domain. This and the contiguous area formed part of District and later Okobo-Oron or Oron Local Government Area of the British Administration and after, until Vice- President Abubakar Atiku woke up to reward the Dukes of the Efiks with a territory for the kindness of a Duke expressed in his vast blessings to Atiku in the Nigerian Department of Customs years back.

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What are the interests of Nigeria in the disputed area? This is a question whose answer is both academic and empirical, but real in both logic against concrete facts that relate to Nigeria's geopolitics. The first is obviously that Nigeria, like any other country cannot be satisfied with the present geographic space, considering especially the fast growing population. But the value attached to this territory in question is the oil; yet a Time magazine sometime reported the great strides Cameroon has made with oil from the zone. Second, population explosion and the progressively worsening home politico-economic situation have in recent years forced Nigerians in their millions (some sources put the number at 3.5 million) to migrate to the . This migration took a turn for the worse during the Biafran War. In fact this input event changed from "Calabar" (essentially generic identification) to "Biafrans". Since the economic down-turn about 30 years ago, migrant labourers population from Nigeria has grown shamefully worse. From my little village one can count at least 100 people. - often with their families - almost permanently resident in the Cameroons hinterland as farm labourers ad coastal zone as fishermen.

Before the Civil War, fisherman population was the most noticeable in the migration scenario. If for example people from Atabong in the present Okobo Local Government area founded a fishing port on the vast marshes sparsely inhabited Bakassi they would give it their Oron mainland name, for example, Ine Atabong (Atabong Fishing port). Perhaps that is how Senator Florence Ita-Giwa - an Okobo native woman who attended school in Oruko (in today's UrueOffong Oruko LGA), whose father was buried in Atabong only three years ago now claims to be from Bakassi which she sees as portion of a non-existent Efik dominion.

Let us take another common sense based reality. What has been behind the fact that a vital land mark in Nigeria like a Bakassi Peninsula was not shown on any Nigerian official maps or geography text books or taught to Nigerian children in school until two decades or so ago. I was taught Bight of Benin and Bight of (later changed to Bight of Bonny). Was this admission of incompetence or share carelessness? There are also some scandalous pieces of evidence that since about 1990 the Nigerian Federal Surveys have not produced new maps of Nigeria. The roadside ones with tails have been on the roads. What reality has this projected?

The above may not be parts of the main arguments in the Hague. But commonsense - with which all of us ordinary citizens who regard ourselves as stakeholders in the country called Nigeria - would take these facts with tremendous seriousness. Were they oversights outside a national and international reality of geography and law of nations? There are yet other non- legal reasons for Nigeria's interest in Bakassi outside the fact of locale. These reasons are pertinent in evolving and identifying Oron perspective in the dispute.

By 1984 the northern cabal who dominated the Nigerian military were known to have found in heightening the Bakassi problem, even to the level of armed conflict, a way of diverting attention from the deteriorating domestic scene - as a way of holding on to power. Reports from Cameroonian defence establishment are known to have reacted to this by strengthening its military power, especially the country's military ties with France. Knowledgeable Oron intellectuals are known to have partly read this into the rush by the Nigerian ruling class to build a naval base at Ibaka near Enwang and what was called James Town, an Efik settlement (courtesy Ibaka people) which had been neutralised by Oron indigenous Uda people of Ibaka as they began to notice Efik territorial ambition.

THE hurry to build this military base was also seen by some in Oron as a design to exercise some sort of surveillance over the South Eastern particularly the intellectually vivacious Oron people. It was officially feared that Oron people could react to an unbearable squeeze on their territorial space and development possibilities the Ibibio and Efik influences which according to Ajato Gondonu "to point of near absorption by both" ("Perspectives in Ethnicity" in Sol Tax, ed. World Anthropology (1978). Both were supported by the Federal Government under the fear that Oron could seeking a separate co- existence with Cameroon Republic where Oron indigenes are often accorded more than ordinary recognition among some ethnic formations. Added to this fear are the pains and sadness that accompany military establishments worldwide. The social

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consequence of a military base on one's territory is better imagined than experienced. We have had it a full cup - disease spread, molestation and denial of human rights.

The Ibibio-Efik squeeze as hinted above has challenged the basic instincts of every Oron person chiefly because of the support it has received in official quarters both during the British era and during the military regime when, for instance, late Colonel Udoakaha Esuene forcibly seized the coastal strip of Oron land and currently when Vice-President Atiku Abubakar single-handedly has apparently successfully turned portions of Oron land over to the Efiks reportedly in return for some personal kindness. It must be noted that the helplessness of Oron Ethnic Nationality in initiating measures for the restoration of its territory results to an extent from the apparent indifference of Government whose interest in Oron is only that it produces oil which wins federal and oil multinationals' rewards and financial allocations for State Government disbursement which excludes Oron five LGAs except for some insignificant share to Mbo. This is seen by Oron community, not only as a bloc against socio-economic development but as a way of undermining the nationality's solidarity and power.

Let me ask the ICJ-specific question: how do Oron people react to the judgement over Bakassi? From both emerging general local and Cameroon-based opinion Oron citizens have reacted with a concern that is the product of their own nationality interest. Having had a survival, vital connection with the Cameroons - in fact, historically more than any other part of South Eastern Nigeria except Umon peoples of the Cross they don't want this fundamental life-line threatened or destroyed. They also, as has been previously noted, believe that they are related to that forever Oro- genic neighbourly country. Cameroon is, frankly, an alternative home from which they return annually in large numbers to execute projects like home building at home. Children of from 10 years visit the Cameroons by huge powered canoes and speed boats at will. Practically, Cameroons is to Oron people what Chad and Niger Chad and also Cameroons (north) are to Nigerian ethnic nationalities in Taraba, Adamawa, Borno, Kano, Jigawa, Katsina and Sokoto. Or as the is to the .

Oron people want peace not war with the Cameroons. As a people who suffered and are still suffering so badly from the fallouts of the Biafra War they are absolutely opposed to any belligerent Nigerian -Cameroonian interface of any description. Furthermore, contrary to the highly uninformed opinion from the wholly pedestrian minds in Nigeria, Oron has a tremendous cultural affinity, which translates to vital interest, with parts of the Cameroons. In fact more than all places in the far north, South West and even Midwestern region of Nigeria. They also see Cameroonians as a highly civilised people whose life-style is better to copy than the crude, money-centred, culturally polluted Nigerians in some of whose places they cannot freely live and earn a living. The recent exchange of "prisoners of war" between Niger and the Cameroons has provided indisputable evidence that Oron (not Efik) people are the largest single Nigerian community in the Cameroons and the area now identified as Bakassi. They are followed by Igbos and Ibibio, Tivi, Ijo and Ogoni (helped by the Saro-Wiwa crisis) who singly have a larger presence there than the Efiks. That is why Oron people are amused by the claim that Efiks occupy the disputed land. Efiks have neither numbers nor the spirit of leaving home or even adventure. A few travel to or live in Lagos - where they are not easy to identify except with Eniong, Okoyong or the Qua, Efut and other ethnic peoples in the Southern senatorial zone. Neither are there any Efik fishermen who must look for water. The fishermen in the former are Oron and Ibibio. Now Ilaje Yoruba and Ghanaians are the next numerous fishing groups.

The falsehood about Bakassi are most times astounding and even fraudulent. For instance, we are yet to be told when an Efik ruler - whose main domain spans less than a square kilometre of the present Calabar metropolis - even visited Oron or any portion of the disputed territory in the exercise of sovereign presence as control. It is this type of falsehood that has informed the use of only lawyers who do not even know the lands in question from the South-West and elsewhere at great costs of over $300,000,000 (about N430,000.00) as legal fees from oil money of which Oron produces a large portion. It is an irony that even a more than 70 year old lawyer who hails from Mbo Local Government just next door to Bakassi was not considered fit to be in the legal team to the Hague. It is therefore not a surprise that Nigeria's advocacy was so horribly impaired that it crashed so dangerously to the chagrin of a Nigerian State that survives on presumptions and organised falsehoods. Most Nigerian leaders do not known the location of Bakassi Peninsula on the map or otherwise. They should ask Oron people or Kanu Agabi.

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Let me conclude by warning that even if the military power strategic balance is in favour of Nigeria, Oron and other nationalities who were ravaged in the civil war will not back the country in any war Nigeria may embark on. And it is suicidal for Nigeria's grossly unpopular government of weakly related and hunger-disorganised small minorities of the Niger Delta to believe that they will support declaration of war on the Cameroons. Even Igbos of the South East will show little support after their recent bitter memories and current man-made disabilities. Then the final observation by way of a question: what can a crisis ridden Nigerian Federal Government do to the Cameroons in the face of a sure inflock of 2,000,000 returnee" refugees into the uneasy, tottering neo-federal Nigeria?

Jan 2003

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