Okon Etim Effiom is still haunted by his past in Bakassi peninsula, 40 kilometres away from Calabar, the capital of southern Nigeria’s Cross River State.
The Bakassi peninsula lies in the Gulf of Guinea and is rich in fish, oil and gas reserves. Around 90 percent of the peninsula’s estimated 300,000 population are Nigerians who were mostly in the fishing industry. Nigerians from states like Ebonyi, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Abia and Delta, also live there. In the immediate aftermath of the handover, tens of thousands of Nigerian fishermen and their families, including Effiom, fled Bakassi to nearby towns in Cross River State.displaced Bakassi residents by September 2008. Other states like Bayelsa came in and took their people back.
The ICJ began to examine colonial-era records, holding judicial debates as they pored over maps and records. By October 2002, the court ruled in favour of Cameroon -- a judgement that was partly influenced by a 1913 treaty between former colonial powers Britain and Germany which, indeed, showed that the area belonged to Cameroon.
“When we go to fish the Cameroon gendarmes would seize our boats, arrest our brothers, ask us to change our identity, and to pay tax, something we have not done before,” the 43-year-old fisherman remembers. “The gendermes said we should leave the territory, and seized a lot of our property and collected plenty tax,” he says. “The hardship was too much so we started finding our way back to Nigeria.”
Only three out of Orok’s six children, all of whom are of school-going age, attend a nearby public school where student desks are inadequate, and classrooms are overcrowded and riddled with badly damaged floors, full of small holes and dust. “Our old mothers and wives go around the community to help families in the host community with household chores, at times they are lucky they get 500 naira .”
Pls send all news of Trtworlds to your telegram channel.