Handover of Lake Chad villages begins

Nigeria handed over the first of 33 villages it is due to return to its eastern neighbour, Cameroon, under the terms of a ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the border dispute between the two countries, officials said on Tuesday. A village called Nada was returned to Cameroon on Monday, said a senior official of Nigeria’s National Boundary Commission. Under the exchanges, scheduled to take place over 10 days, Nigeria will give up another two villages on 16 December in return for one from Cameroon. The process will be concluded on 18 December when Nigeria will return the remaining 30 villages, he said. The handover process was worked out at meetings of the Nigeria-Cameroon Mixed Commission in the Nigerian capital Abuja late in October and Yaounde, the Cameroon capital, last week. The Commission was set up under the auspices of the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, following the October 2002 judgment of the ICJ on a dispute between the two countries along their 1,500 km common border. Nigeria had declared it would not accept the ICJ ruling awarding ownership of the oil-rich Bakassi Peninsula in the Gulf of Guinea to Cameroon. But after a meeting arranged by Annan, Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Paul Biya of Cameroon agreed to resolve their disputes peacefully and subsequently set up the joint body. The handover of territory involves dismantling administrative structures, withdrawing security agents, customs and immigration services and replacing them with those of the recipient country. Nigeria acknowledges that its citizens in the Lake Chad area strayed into Cameroon territory while following in the wake of the Lake's receding waters over the past four decades. Issues yet to be resolved by the Commission include demarcating the southern and maritime borders between the two countries, including the bitterly disputed Bakassi Peninsula which is believed to be rich in oil. Nigeria has yet to make clear it will handover Bakassi, inhabited almost entirely by its citizens. Nigerian officials have often said the country was only concerned about the fate of its citizens in the peninsula and not interested in its resources. The inhabitants have on their part threatened to seek self-determination if they were forced to become Cameroonians.