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THE ROLE OF ICJ IN THE RESOLUTION OF BAKASI CONFLICT

ABSTRACT

Territorial disputes are endemic in Africa; the Bakassi dispute was one of such. It was submitted by Cameroon to the International Court of Justice at The Hague for its determination. The judgement that followed suffered weighty denunciation particularly in Nigeria, yet it enjoyed great approbation internationally. The discovery of oil reserves in the waters surrounding Bakassi Peninsula subjected it to claims and counter-claims for sovereignty, military occupation and recourse to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). On October 10, 2002, the International Court of Justice ruled that the Peninsula and the territory in the Lake Chad region should be under the sovereignty of Cameroon. This judgment elicited sensitive scholarly issues of citizenship and self-determination as fundamental human rights. Also, it encountered difficulties in implementation, which following intensive diplomatic activities culminating in the 12 June 2006 Green Tree Agreement brokered by the United Nations and guaranteed by four world powers- Britain, France, Germany and United States, set the modalities of withdrawal and transfer of authority in the Bakassi Peninsula. This work, therefore, is a product of the study of the role of ICJ in the Nigeria-Cameroon boundary dispute. To this effect, we ascertained how the ICJ adjudication on the Bakassi Peninsula constituted the denial of the human rights of Bakassi citizens; the provisions of the Green Tree Agreement resolved the difficulties in the implementation of the ICJ ruling; the interests of external powers affected the adjudication and implementation of the ICJ ruling. We employed the schema theory of security dilemma as our analytical framework to provide a conceptual foundation for the study. Our method of data collection and analysis are qualitative and qualitative descriptive methods respectively. In the final analysis, we posited that although the judgment was based on facts presented by both parties, the conduct of plebiscite that will take into cognizance the human rights of the Bakassi citizens would have been more effective in the settlement of the dispute.