Bakassi – Senate Yet to Ratify Green Tree Agreement With Cameroon – Ndoma-Egba

Johnbosco Agbakwuru

29 June 2011

Calabar — Senate Leader, Chief Victor Ndoma-Egba, has said that barely five years after the Green Tree Agreement between Nigeria and Cameroon was signed and Nigeria finally surrendered its sovereignty of the oil-rich Bakassi Peninsula to the Cameroon, the Senate is yet to ratify the agreement.

The International Court of Justice, ICJ, sitting at The Hagues, Netherland had on October 2002 delivered a judgment over the ownership of the Bakassi in favour of Cameroon.

Speaking in an interview in Calabar, Chief Ndoma-Egba said when Bakassi was ceded during the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, contribution from the National Assembly was not called for and that the involvement of the international agencies had been insignificant since the peninsula was ceded despite the promises made.

He explained that since the ceding of the oil-rich peninsula to Cameroon, the issue of refugees returning en-mass to Cross River State had not attracted enough attention from international agencies.

It was gathered that the burden of resettling the returnees had been left in the hands of Cross River State Government and little collaboration with the Federal Government but without input from the international agencies like the United Nations, among others.

“I have been very consistent in my position about the indifference by the international community to the Bakassi issue. If you remember, the Bakassi issue was driven by the UN, urged on by Britain, US and France.

“Now when they urged us to that Green Tree Agreement, one would have expected that the same enthusiasm that they showed in urging us to that point should have been showed regarding the consequences of the Green Tree Agreement.”

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