Jonathan Lets Bakassi Appeal Window Close; Efik King Joins Cause with Ambazonian Separatists: Nigeria Update, 7-13 October 2012

Secession of the Bakassi Peninsula is in the air again as the deadline for appealing its cession to Cameroon is allowed to pass, and the Efik king and other leaders begin envisioning a Bakassi Republic carved out of pieces of both Nigeria and Cameroon.  Read on ...

Appeal Window Closes, Angering Efik and Others in Nigeria.  Despite a last-minute lawsuit by Bakassian activists, Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, allowed an October 10th deadline to pass, thus closing the window of opportunity for appealing a 2002 ruling by the International Court of Justice (I.C.J.) ceding the Bakassi Peninsula to the Republic of Cameroon.  Nine Bakassians in Cross River State in southeastern Nigeria had filed a lawsuit this week against the federal government over the question of sovereignty over the disputed peninsula.  The plaintiffs, a group called the Free Bakassi Association, asked the court to void the Green Tree Agreement of 2006, in which Nigeria acquiesced to the I.C.J. decision, and to order the Nigerian government to retake the disputed area by any means necessary.  But on October 8th, Mohammed Bello Adoke, the Nigerian minister of justice, announced that the deadline would be allowed to pass without appeal.  But Adoke promised to press Cameroon on the rights of Bakassians and other Nigerians living in Cameroonian territory.

Betrayed Bakassians Mull an Efik Republic to Straddle Nigerian-Cameroonian Border.  As the Nigerian government allowed the window on appealing the Bakassi cession to close on October 10th, furious Bakassians on both sides of the (now utterly officially demarcated) Nigerian–Cameroonian border took to the streets to protest.  Liyel Imoke, governor of Nigeria’s Cross River State—where many of the Efik ethnic minority live, including those displaced from Bakassi years ago when the territory was first transferred—pleaded for calm.  More pointedly, supporters of the once-sovereign Efik kingdom marched on the governor’s office, and Ekpo Abasi Otu, the obong of Calabar—the current hereditary ruler of the Efik-dominated Calabar Kingdom—said on the 10th, according to media, “that the Efik were considering the invitation by the people of Southern Cameroon to form a republic as the Federal Government [of Nigeria] had sold their ancestral land to Cameroon.  The coordinator of the Save Bakassi Group, Maurice Ekong, said that this was “the beginning of a long struggle for sovereignty.”  Also in Cross River, Cletus Obun, who heads the Cameroon Border Communities Association (C.B.C.A.), said this week that his group will petition the United Nations for a plebiscite and “will embark on serious mobilisation across local government areas bordering Cameroon in collaboration with the Efiks in Bakassi and the Southern Cameroon for an independent state of Abazonia.”  Efik and other ethnic groups in southwestern Cameroon, including many in the Bakassi Peninsula and many in the areas that used to be the British-ruled Southern Cameroons colony before a merger with Cameroon, newly independent from France, have been pushing for decades for a separate nation, to be called either Ambazonia or Ambazania (as opposed to Obun’s “Abazonia” (a new spelling, or a typo?) above).  Efik activists in August declared an island off the coast of the Bakassi Peninsula the “Republic of Bakassi.”

The obong of Calabar

See an earlier article in this blog with a full discussion of the Bakassi and Ambazonia questions.

Meanwhile, sources are reporting that the Cameroonian government’s security forces are cracking down in Bakassi and Efik in Nigeria have been unable to contact relatives on the Cameroonian side of the border.

Jonathan Offered Okah Amnesty for Blaming Bombs on Political Enemies, Court Hears.  In the trial of the accused Ogoni separatist bomber Henry Okah, which began last week in Johannesburg, South Africa (as reported at the time in this blog), the court screened a 2009 interview with the Qatar-based Al Jazeera news network, shot after he’d been granted amnesty by the Nigerian government, in which he said, “There are still thousands and thousands and thousands who are prepared to fight and continue fighting,” adding, “I don’t look like I am contributing to violence; I am participating in fighting for my rights.”  When asked if he was repentant for past violence, he said, “I’m not.  Why should I be?  What we want is our land.  ...  I think in a few months, if government doesn’t address the real demands ... very soon, there will be a resumption of violence.”  Okah, alleged leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), is being accused of masterminding a wave of car-bombings in Nigeria in the year following that interview.  In another interview heard by the court, Okah claimed that after the 2010 car bombings a representative of Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, phoned him in South Africa and asked him to get MEND to retract its claim of responsibility so that Jonathan could “blame the attacks on northerners who are trying to fight against him to come back as president, and if this was done, I was not going to have any problems with the South African government.”  Okah refused the offer, he said in the interview, and a few hours later was arrested.

The Ogoni flag

New Igbo Youth Movement Says It Lured 1,000 Away from MASSOB.  The head of publicity for a new Igbo group in southeastern Nigeria, the Association of Igbo Youths (AIYO), registered in 2007, said on October 5th that at least 1,000 members have fled a longer established group, MASSOB, to join AIYO, citing as a cause that MASSOB does not look at those that have been imprisoned, widowed, or orphaned as the result of MASSOB violence.  MASSOB stands for Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra.  AIYO, by contrast, according to the publicity head, Charles Chikeli, is a “youth vanguard” which promotes “peace, love, and oneness of the Igbo in accordance with the laws of the country.”

AS MANY AS 98 DEAD IN NORTH NIGERIA INCLUDE 30 SHOT BY “BERSERK” SOLDIERS.

On October 6th, battles raged for half an hour in Damaturu, capital of Yobe State in northern Nigeria, between the Islamist insurgency group Boko Haram and the federal government’s anti-terrorist Joint Task Force (J.T.F.), but there were no reports of casualties.  Six Boko Haram fighters were captured and arrested, some with the help of the citizenry.

Around the same time, two people in the village of Dogon Kuka, in northern Yobe, were killed when unknown gunmen opened fire on them.

A bomb blast near a television studio in Jalingo, capital of Taraba State in Nigeria’s mixed-Christian-and-Muslim east-central Middle Belt region, injured eight people on the night of October 6-7, including a woman and five children.  Boko Haram is suspected.

On October 7th, also in northern Yobe State, Nigerian troops killed approximately 30 suspected Boko Haram fighters in a battle that lasted several hours.  Among the dead, according to an army spokesman, was “the notorious, one-eyed Bakaka, the field commander of Boko Haram in Damaturu and a close associate of Abubakar Shekau,” the apparent leader of the terror network.  Hospitals also reported five uniformed men among the dead, presumably government soldiers.  Ten insurgents were arrested, and a gigantic cache of weapons and other equipment was recovered.

The “one-eyed” warlord Bakaka, recently neutralized—
though he seems to have full stereoscopic vision in this photo

On October 8th, in Maiduguri, capital of Borno State, an afternoon bombing of a military convoy killed 20 civilians and burned 50 homes.  An army lieutenant and six other military personnel were also apparently killed in the explosion, which prompted Nigerian troops in the area to “go berserk” in an impoverished neighborhood, opening fire, according to witnesses, and mowing down and killing 30 people that included civilians as well as those later identified as Boko Haram fighters.  They also set over 100 buildings, including houses and shops, and 35 vehicles ablaze.  Since military sources would not confirm any details of the alleged rampage—and claim no one other than two soldiers were injured in the initial blast—it is possible that there was only one wave of fires, attributed by different sources to either soldiers or the terrorist bomb.  One resident said, “The atrocities going on in Maiduguri is worse than what obtains in Somalia.  People are being killed and their wealth destroyed by the soldiers.”  In Kano, in north-central Nigeria, two police officers were shot and killed by gunmen on motorcycles on October 9th while protecting medical workers administering polio vaccine door to door.  Police have arrested eight suspected Islamist militants in connection with that incident.

Two days later, also in Kano, two officers with the Nigerian Federal Road Safety Commission (F.R.S.C.) were shot and killed by unknown gunmen, presumed to be Boko Haram.  An additional officer was injured.

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it in spring 2013.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]

Abuja Rallies, Cameroon Crackdown in Run-Up to Anniversary of Bakassi Cession; Ogoni Trials in Washington, Johannesburg; Achebe on Biafra: Nigeria Separatism Update, 30 September - 6 October 2012

Bakassian Activists Rally for Appeal of Nigerian Cession to Cameroon as Deadline Looms.  As the clock ticks down to the October 10th deadline for appealing the 2002 International Court of Justice (I.C.J.) decision ceding the Bakassi Peninsula from Nigeria to Cameroon—a step Nigeria’s central government has said it will not take—indigenous Bakassians, mostly from the Efik ethnic group, held demonstrations on September 30th in England, Germany, France, and the Netherlands, as well as in Lagos, Nigeria, in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, and in Calabar, in southeastern Nigeria, seat of the precolonial Efik-dominated Calabar Kingdom.  One Bakassian activist, Ani Esin, said that the Nigerian government’s lack of interest in pressing its claim has emboldened the authoritarian government in Cameroon to send troops into the Bakassi region, where Efik activists on August 6th declared an independent Republic of Bakassi, and a retired admiral and former vice-president of Nigeria, Adm. Mike Okhai Akhigbe, said that if any government “fails to appeal the judgment, it should be considered as treasonable felony,” adding, “It is a shame that a country like Cameroon will outwit Nigeria on issues like this.”  Late in the week, Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, formed a committee to address the I.C.J. question and also the needs of displaced Bakassians, but it may be too little too late in the view of many.  (See my recent article on Bakassi and Ambazonia for a more detailed discussion.)

Cameroonian Forces Round Up Southern Separatists on Anniversary of Annexation.  In Cameroon itself, in Buea, capital of the Southwest Region that includes the Bakassi Peninsula, security forces stormed churches and other venues on the morning of October 1st and rounded up more than 100 suspected activists in favor of the secession of the larger “Southern Cameroons” region from Cameroon.  Activists say that in other towns scores were arrested in a crackdown across several cities leading up to October 1st, which is the date in 1961 when the formerly-U.K.-administered Southern Cameroons territory was forcibly attached, in the view of activists, to the new francophone-dominated Republic of Cameroon.  Those arrested include Nfor Ngalla Nfor, who is vice-chairman of the Southern Cameroons National Council (S.C.N.C.), and Augustine Ndangam, who is vice-chairman of the Southern Cameroons Peoples Organisation (SCAPO).  Both the S.C.N.C. and SCAPO, the group from which it split in the 1990s, have at times declared the formerly British parts of Cameroon and independent republic variously called Ambazonia or Ambazania.  There are also reports that the separatist flag has been raised at the envisioned boundary between the southern republic and Cameroon proper.  (See my recent article on Bakassi and Ambazonia for a more detailed discussion.)

The flag of Ambazonia

Nigerian Immigration Officer Confesses to Boko Haram Ties, Fingers Others.  In Nigeria, an immigration officer has been arrested after confessing to be a member of Boko Haram, the radical Islamist terrorist group operating in the north of the country.  The officer had been impersonating an army officer, the military says, and his arrest led to the arrests of others as well.  An army colonel told media, “He also confessed to having been trained alongside 15 other members of the sect on weapons handling, assassination, and special operations in Niger.”  The officer, Ahmed Grema Mohammed, had been arrested last month on his way to carry out an assassination in Borno State when he was arrested by the federal government’s anti-terrorist Joint Task Force (J.T.F.).

In Video, Boko Haram Leader Reports Arrest of Spokesman, Denies Peace Talks.  The supposed leader of Boko Haram revealed in a video uploaded to YouTube on September 30th—the 52nd anniversary of Nigeria’s independence from the United Kingdom—that its spokesman, Abu Qaqa, has been arrested by Nigerian security forces, adding, “I believe strongly that after this message from me they may decide to kill him this night.”  In the same statement, the alleged leader, Abubakar Shekau, denied earlier government claims that the Nigerian government is involved in secret negotiations with the group.  Speaking in Hausa, Shekau also warned of repercussions from the Coptic-American-made low-budget video Innocence of Muslims, which has caused rioting around the Muslim world.  “Everybody should wait and see what we will do regarding this,” he said.

Abubakar Shekau

5 Dead in Week of Boko Haram Violence in Northern Nigeria.  Meanwhile, violence related to Boko Haram in northern Nigeria continues.  Militants attacked an Islamic boarding school in Zaria, in Kaduna State in north-central Nigeria, on September 30th, with arms and explosives, resulting in a mêlée that left two militants dead and others injured.  The school is run by a Salafist cleric who is an outspoken critic of Boko Haram.  Two explosions October 1st in Maiduguri, in Borno State in Nigeria’s far northeast, injured at least two soldiers, but some reports say as many as seven soldiers were killed in one of the two blasts.  In Jalingo, capital of Taraba State, on October 4th, three were killed and at least 12 seriously wounded in a bomb attack at a “bush bar” (open-air pub).  (Meanwhile, this week’s massacre of at least 45 people at a college in Mubi, in Adamawa State, in the predominantly-Muslim northeast, was deemed eventually to be the result of student-government strife and not related to Islamism or Boko Haram.)

2 Nigerian Spiritual Leaders Long-Listed for Nobel Peace Prize.  Amidst the escalating violence between Christians and Muslims (mostly Muslim-initiated) in northern and central Nigeria, two local leaders, one from each of the two faiths, has made the long list for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.  Both the nominees—John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan, the Roman Catholic Archibishop of Abuja, and Amirul Mumineen Sultan Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar III, the largely ceremonial Sultan of Sokoto, considered the spiritual leader of northern Nigerian Muslims—are critics of the violence of the Islamist militia Boko Haram.  Only one Nigerian, the late Wole Soyinka, has ever won a Nobel Prize, his for literature in 1986.

John Onaiyekan and the Sultan of Sokoto, Nobel Peace nominees

Nigeria’s “Middle Belt” Organizes to Assert Identity.  The United Middle Belt Youth Congress (U.M.B.Y.C.), which represents 144 ethnic groups in north-central Nigeria, this week asked the federal government for “a clean and everlasting break from the political oppression of the North.  Our greatest joy will be to be identified as and be called Middle Belt people the world over.”  The Middle Belt is a fuzzily defined term for the areas in Nigeria that have a mixed population of Muslims, who dominate the far north, and Christians, who dominate the southern half of the country.  Especially in the eastern part of the Middle Belt, some predominantly-Christian ethnic groups have been disproportionately targeted by terrorism at the hands of Boko Haram’s northern Muslim insurgency.  Some Middle Belt ethnic groups that are not Muslim or only moderately Muslim also live under shari’a (Islamic law) as the result of northern political pressure.

Niger Delta Separatist Goes on Trial in South Africa for Abuja Lethal Car-Bombing.  In Johannesburg, South Africa, trial resumed this week of Henry Okah, a national of Nigeria who is charged with masterminding a wave of terrorist acts in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, two years ago.  Okah is the alleged leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), which claimed responsibility for a 2010 car bombing that killed 12 people.  He is being tried in South Africa because that is where he fled and was eventually arrested after the attacks.  On the first day of testimony, on October 2nd, the court heard from Selekaye Victor Ben, a former MEND media liaison who stated, “MEND was created to pursue the Niger Delta cause ... to fight for resource control.  ...  We engaged in guerilla warfare such as attacking military formations and oil installation and would facilitate the abduction of expats.”

Courtroom sketch of Henry Okah

U.S. Supreme Court Revisits Suit against Shell Oil for Human-Rights Crimes in Nigeria.  The Supreme Court of the United States on October 1st began its new session by revisiting a lawsuit by 12 Nigerians against the Netherlands-based multinational oil firm Royal Dutch Shell for being an accomplice to torture, execution-style murders, and crimes against humanity carried out against Ogoni people and others in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region.  The named plaintiff in the case, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, is the widow of Dr. Barinem Kiobel, who was hanged by the Nigerian dictatorship along with the internationally renowned novelist and Ogoni-rights spokesman Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995.  Shell is accused by Kiobel et al. of assisting the Nigerian junta in the killings of over 800 people.  It will be a new test of a centuries-old law, the Alien Tort Statute (A.T.S.) that allows firms to be held accountable in U.S. courts for crimes committed overseas.  One constitutional lawyer was quoted as speculated that the Court might be unwilling to hear the case for being “afraid of some kind of backlash, what other nations will think of us.”  Which makes one wonder: what do other nations think of us?  One would think that a willingness to hold murderers and torturers accountable—unlike Barack Obama’s free pass to those who waged the illegal war in Iraq—can only improve the U.S. image abroad.

Anti-Capitalism Pranksters “Yes Men” Take on Shell Oil to Highlight Rights Case.  Meanwhile, a group of anti-capitalist pranksters and “culture-jammers” called the Yes Men , along with a group calling itself People against Legalized Murder (PALM), pulled off a stunt this week to lure tens of thousands of Royal Dutch Shell employees to a website—http://www.murderisbad.com/ (also see this Shell parody site)—alerting them to the United States Supreme Court case (see story above) over their human-rights abuses in Nigeria.  Shell acted quickly to block employees’ access to the site, leading to a corporation-vs.-hacker digital cat-and-mouse game.  The Yes Men’s Andy Bichlbaum said, “Surely most Shell employees, like most people, don’t want multinationals to get away with murder just because murder’s convenient.”  PALM’s Sean Dagohoy points, out, “When it comes to things like election spending, Shell and other corporations want to have all the rights of people.  But when accused of murder, Shell conveniently argues they aren’t a person.”

Mike Bonnano and Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men, impersonating oil executives in an earlier stunt

Achebe Publishes New Memoir of Biafra War.  The world-renowned Igbo novelist from Nigeria, Chinua Achebe, has a new book due for release next week, chronicling for the first time his family’s experience in the disastrous Biafran War of 1967-1970.  Achebe, author of the global best-seller Things Fall Apart, which portrays the Igbo experience with colonialism, was an outspoken proponent of independence for the Igbo region in southeastern Nigeria, Biafra, but after the Nigerian government brutally reconquered Biafra in 1970, at the cost of more than a million lives, Achebe spent two decades in exile in America before returning to his homeland.  The new book, There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra, appears at a time when Nigeria is subject to more secessionist pressures, in almost every region, since the Biafran War.

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it in spring 2013.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]