<SUNBIGHT> – 22 December, 2021.
THE end of the plight of returnees of the Bakassi peninsula and the historic judgment of the International Court of Justice which ceded the peninsula to the Cameroons is not near in sight as the Director General of the Nigerian Boundary Commission (NBC), Adamu Adaji says the final demarcation will happen by 2022.
16 out of 20 articles of agreement have been resolved by the Cameroon-Nigeria Mixed Commission (CNMC), which is handling the exercise, Mr. Adaji told journalists on Monday.
The Punch Newspapers quotes Mr. Adaji as saying that over a thousand pillars have been erected along the boundaries between the two countries, adding that the affected communities had also been resettled. He dismissed as untrue reports that Nigeria would lose several communities and local governments areas to Cameroon.
Mr. Adaji said the negotiations of the mixed commission stalled for a while due to “factors beyond our control,” but added that there has been “appreciable progress.”
“We had the meeting of the Nigeria-Cameroon on the boundary demarcation some years back but because of factors beyond our control, we could not hold a meeting for a long while until just last month.
“We had the 33rd session. We agreed that the 34th session would hold in Abuja in the middle of 2022. It is for us to review the progress, we have made so much progress.
“We are almost rounding off except that in the course of the conduct of the exercise, there are some areas that were skipped due to security challenges; there were some areas that were skipped due to the exact interpretation of the text of the (World Court) judgment.
“We have been able to close ranks: We started with over 20 or so disagreement areas, we have only four that are still outstanding, and we have earmarked programs to undertake in 2022 to harvest those four,” he stated.■
[Courtesy: Ushang EWA / CrossRiverWatch]
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