Nigeria’s Adamawa Kingdom Invokes Sovereignty, Hints at Unification with Kindred in Cameroon

The king of Adamawa, one of the smaller ethnonational groups within Nigeria, added his voice to the strains pulling the country apart this week when he announced at a national conference that he had the right to take his kingdom out of Nigeria if he chose.  Muhammadu Barkindo Aliyu Musdaphar, the Lamido (king; also translated as “emir”) of Adamawa, said, in the midst of a debate over a procedural question, that he and the Adamawa kingdom had sovereignty that overrode Nigerian sovereignty, adding, “My people and the people of Adamawa have got somewhere to go.  I am the Lamido of Adamawa and my kingdom extends to Cameroon.  The larger part of my kingdom is in Cameroon.  Part of that kingdom is today called Adamawa State in Cameroon.  You see, if I run to that place, I will easily assimilate.”

The location of Adamawa state within Nigeria

Nigeria’s Adamawa state and Cameroon’s border one another.  The Adamawa are a mid-sized ethnic group by Nigerian standards, a predominantly-Muslim group in the eastern Middle Belt region who speak a language related to Fulani, one of the dominant languages of the separatist north of Nigeria.

Muhammadu Barkindo Aliyu Musdaphar, king of Adamawa

Condemnation of the king’s words came from many quarters.  Chief Gani Adams, national coordinator of the Oodua People’s Congress (O.P.C.), a Yoruba autonomist movement, said, “I was highly disappointed by his statement; an eminent royal father like the Lamido of Adamawa ought not to make such a statement.  He is one of the most respected emirs we have in Nigeria today.  ...  I seize this opportunity to appeal to the royal fathers, including the emir, to watch their statements.  Nobody should threaten the unity of Nigeria.  ...  We, the Yoruba people, want to remain in Nigeria, but we shouldn’t be threatened.”

But a spokesman for the Northern Elders Forum (N.E.F.) voiced support for the way the king expressed his frustration with the procedures at the annual National Conference.

The flag of the Kingdom of Adamawa.  If they declare independence,
they really might want to think about spicing this up a little bit.

Though Nigeria is riven by Biafran (Igbo), Ogoni, and other autonomy and independence movements, as well as a brutal Islamist insurgency in the north which threatens to divide the country permanently, it is rare for one of the scores of traditional kingdoms in the multiethnic country to claim sovereignty on a monarchical basis.  One exception today is the Calabar Kingdom, farther south along the Nigerian–Cameroonian border, where Efik separatism has been stoked by a border dispute between the two countries over the Bakassi Peninsula and an insurgency by the Ambazonian or Southern Cameroons peoples of the formerly Anglophone portions of Cameroon.

King Barkindo with throne and scepter

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with my 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.  The book, which contains dozens of maps and over 500 flags, is now in the layout phase and should be on shelves, and available on Amazon, by early fall 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even though you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook.]

Bakassian Border Survey Team Scatters; More Boko Haram Carnage: Nigeria Update, 18-24 November 2012

Lawmaker, Pastor, Police Inspector Gunned Down in Wave of Boko Haram Hits.  Police in Nigeria reported on November 18th the assassination of Ibrahim Abba Garko, a legislator in the Kano State assembly, who was gunned down in a motorcycle drive-by shooting in the city of Kano.  He died on the spot, and two companions were wounded.  He was a member of the country’s ruling party, the People’s Democratic Party (P.D.P.).  The following day, a 70-year-old Christian pastor was shot and killed in front of his family by suspected Boko Haram members in Maiduguri, capital of Borno State in the northeast.  The minister, the Rev. Ilaisha (other reports say Elisha) Kabura, was on his way to conduct a service for a Church of Christ in Nations congregation.  He had received Boko Haram death threats before.  The same day, a police inspector, Babangida Danbabo, was shot and killed on his way home from prayers at a mosque in Bauchi, in Bauchi State.

Rioting between Christians, Muslims in Nigerian Middle Belt Kills 4.  Four people were killed in street warfare between Christians and Muslims in east-central Nigeria on November 18th after a Muslim in the town of Ibi, in Taraba State, refused to submit to a checkpoint set up by a Christian vigilante group.  The checkpoint was one of many set up in the town as a way of keeping Muslims from approaching churches, in the wake of a barrage of church bombings by the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram in recent months.  Both churches and mosques were burned down in the rioting that ensued, and the military was sent into the town to keep order.  Taraba State is in the east of the region known as the Middle Belt, where Muslims and Christians live side by side.  Also, in the central Middle Belt state of Nasarawa, seven people, including a seven-year-old boy were killed on November 21st in rioting between the Koro and Eggon ethnic groups in the town of Agyaragu.  At least 10 people were injured and 15 houses burned down.

Rioting in Ibi

Military Operation in Northeast Nigeria Kills Boko Haram Commander, Others.  A joint military and police operation in Nigeria, including the anti-terrorist Joint Task Force (J.T.F.), state security forces, and even the air force, launched a major offensive on November 21st against the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State in northeastern Nigeria, resulting in the death of a Boko Haram commander, Ibn Saleh Ibrahim.  Several other Boko Haram fighters were also killed, according to the military.  The following day in Maiduguri, Boko Haram members killed three children—ages 5, 7, and 12—in their mother’s presence, amid a total of five similar murders that day.  The children’s father was Aduju Zubairu, a member of Nigeria’s federal State Security Service (S.S.S.).

Reportedly Escaped Boko Haram Prisoner Turns Out to Be in Hospital.  In Nigeria, media reported this week that the country’s inspector general of police, Mohammed Abubakar, had informed President Goodluck Jonathan that the media reports of the escape from police custody of the Boko Haram commander Sani Mohammed (a.k.a. Mohammed Sani) on November 8th (as reported earlier in this blog) were a false story and that in fact the suspect was sick and in a hospital.  He had been arrested in January 2012 along with another suspect, Bakir Sokoto.

Bakassians Disrupt Nigerian-Cameroonian Border Survey Team, Protesting Cession.  Demonstrators from the Bakassi Peninsula disrupted the activities of a surveying team marking the newly negotiated boundary between Nigeria and Cameroon on November 21st and 22nd, over what they call a betrayal by the Nigerian government, which last month intentionally let pass a last opportunity to contest an International Court of Justice (I.C.J.) ruling ceding Bakassi to Cameroon.  The Joint Technical Team was made up of United Nations, Nigerian, and Cameroonian officials.  The demonstrators carried placards and prevented the team from reaching the site.  After the disruptions, the U.N. temporarily suspended the surveying project.  See a recent article in this blog detailing the Bakassi dispute.

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with my 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.  The book, which contains dozens of maps and over 500 flags, is now in the layout phase and should be on shelves, and available on Amazon, by early fall 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even though you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook.]

Nigerian Troops Massacre Civilians, Boko Haram Church Suicide Bombing, Kalabari-Bayelsa Border Row, Biafra Abductions: Nigeria Separatism Update, 28 October - 3 November 2012

The aftermath of an attack in Kaduna

TOP STORY:

NIGERIAN MILITARY MURDERS SCORES OF YOUNG MEN IN MAIDUGURI,

BRINGING CIVIL WAR WITH BOKO HARAM TO HIGHER LEVEL

Numerous witnesses in the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, in Borno State, say that federal troops murdered dozens of young men over the night of October 31st–November 1st in a series of house raids and in a chillingly described summary execution in a field.  Many of the men—at least 39 of them, according to a local morgue, and perhaps as many as 70—were killed in front of their parents.  The men, aged 18 to 25, were apparently accused or suspected of membership in Boko Haram, the Islamist insurgency in northern Nigeria.  The Nigerian military says it knows nothing about it, but a new report by Amnesty International, coincidentally released the morning after the killings, takes the Nigerian government to task for its heavy-handedness, concluding, “We found that the very grave human rights abuses by the armed group Boko Haram are being met with serious human rights violations by security forces in their response to Boko Haram.”  The report mentions not just killings or disappearances but detention without trial, torture, and military retaliation against entire neighborhoods, including bulldozing of homes.

A retired general was assassinated at his home in Maiduguri on November 2nd, according to the military, in what may have been retaliations for the military massacres.

Boko Haram Spokesman Offers Nigeria Peace Talks, with Conditions.  Journalists in Maiduguri, in Borno State, held a conference call November 1st with a man claiming to be a Boko Haram leader named Abu Mohammed Ibn Abdulaziz, who offered Nigeria’s government the chance to engage them in peace talks, but on strict conditions.  The conditions were that the talks must take place in Saudi Arabia and must involve Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s former military ruler, who is a Muslim from the northern Fulani ethnic group.  Abdulaziz claimed to be speaking on behalf of Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau.  Nigeria’s federal anti-terrorist Joint Task Force (J.T.F.) has rejected the conditions.

Abubakar Shekau

Jeep-Bombing of Northern Nigerian Church Kills 10; Christian Mob Kills 3 Muslims.  At least 10 people were killed in a suicide car-bombing of a Roman Catholic church in Kaduna, in north-central Nigeria, on October 28th, and over 140 were injured.  The bomber used a jeep to ram the church before detonating himself and much of the building.  No one has claimed responsibility, but Boko Haram is suspected.  In reprisal, a mob of young Christians with sticks and machetes rampaged in the city, beating three Muslims to death.  Kaduna is in the Middle Belt region where Christians and Muslims live side by side.

Boko Haram Arsonists Attack 2 Schools, Police Station in Remote Village.  Gunmen suspected of being members of the Islamist militia Boko Haram set a police station, two schools, and a telecommunications tower on fire in Chibok, in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno State, on October 30th.  Witnesses said they arrived in Volkswagens and threw Molotov cocktails while shouting, “God is great!”  Youths with bows and arrows chased the terrorists out of town.  There were no injuries, but the fires raged uncontrolled, since the village has no fire department.

Kalabari Kingdom Accuses Bayelsa of Altering Maps to Grab Resources.  A leading chief from the Kalabari Kingdom (a.k.a. Calabar) in southeastern Nigeria’s Rivers State, in the Niger Delta region, said at a news conference in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, on October 29th that he opposed plans by Bayelsa State, which borders Rivers to the west, to annex part of its traditionally Kalabari-ruled territory.  The chief, Emmanuel Awoyesuku, chairman of Akulga Local Government Area, blamed the effort—first introduced without comment via an altered map, he said—on Bayelsa leaders’ attempt “to exert economic control over the oil and gas rich communities within Kalabari territory.”  Bayelsa is the home state of Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, an Ijaw, who has been accused of supporting Bayelsan separatism (as reported in this blog).  The Bayelsa State government denies the charges and also says Jonathan does not support annexation either.  The five communities Awoyesuku accuses Bayelsans of coveting are Ijaw, which is the dominant ethnic group in Bayelsa but not in Rivers or in the Kalabari Kingdom.  Meanwhile, the Kalabari Kingdom is also involved in a territorial dispute on its eastern flank, where the Bakassi Peninsula has been ceded, against residents’ will (as discussed in detail in this blog), to the Republic of Cameroon.

Kalabari activists in Abuja

Human-Rights Group Sues Nigerian Government over Denial of Biafran Independence.  Trial began in Owerri, Nigeria, in a lawsuit brought by a human-rights group against the federal government for the suffering and death caused to the indigenous Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria during the Biafra War of 1967-70.  The plaintiff, listed as Bilie Human Rights Initiative, is asking for nothing less than a court order for the government to implement “the self-actualisation and self-determination of the People of Biafra.”  The attorney general and president of Nigeria are listed as the defendants.

Biafra “Zionists” Claim Leader, 3 Others Abducted by Rival Igbo Separatist Group.  Just a few days before its planned declaration of independence from Nigeria (as discussed earlier in this blog), the leader of a fringe Igbo separatist group, the Biafra Zionist Movement (B.Z.M.), was abducted by members of the more mainstream separatist group, MASSOB.  The leader, Benjamin Onwuka, a lawyer, was one of four members kidnapped, according to Cornelius Anyanwu, the B.Z.M.’s “director of mobilisation.”  The other three were the organization’s national chairman, Samuel Edeson; its national secretary, Nweke Nweke; and another member named Chukwuma Orienta.  For its part, MASSOB—or, in full, the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra—claims that it was not an abduction but an “invitation” to a meeting about the planned declaration.  One of the abducted men called Anyanwu to tell him they had been snatched from their homes and were being driven to Imo State, where MASSOB’s leader, Ralph Uwazulike, lives.  But B.Z.M. spokesmen said the declaration of independence would occur on the 5th as scheduled, in Enugu.

Members of the Biafra Zionist Movement

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with my 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.  The book, which contains dozens of maps and over 500 flags, is now in the layout phase and should be on shelves, and available on Amazon, by early fall 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even though you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook.]

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.]

Ambazonian Separatists Focus on Bakassi Peninsula in New Push to Split Cameroon

[Note: This article was written based on preliminary reports on the Bakassi situation.  A more complete analysis, with more background, is in my blog article “Southern Nigeria Splitting Apart Too as Muslim North Burns” (Aug. 23, 2012).]

The flag of Ambazonia

The relatively newly minted Ambazonia People’s Congress (A.P.C.), representing Cameroon’s Anglophone minority, has asked the national legislature to revisit the 2006 international agreement under which the Bakassi Peninsula was transferred from Nigeria to Cameroon.  The group’s head, Fon Gorji-Dinka—an attorney working since the 1980s on behalf of the formerly British-ruled Southern Cameroon region, which now includes Bakassi—claims that the Bakassi region is technically a part of neither Nigeria nor Cameroon but in fact an independent state.

A scene during the tense period, in 2006, when the United Nations
was deciding whether Bakassi was to be part of Nigeria or Cameroon.
Many Efik here still feel Nigerian, though they have been made into Cameroonians.

Gorji-Dinka’s rather flimsy and tangential legal argument cites a 1984 United Nations (U.N.) committee finding referring to a distinct region called Ambazonia and the 1984 Cameroonian law erasing the Cameroon’s status as a titular union of Anglophone and Francophone territories—i.e. the name change from the United Republic of Cameroon to the Republic of Cameroon.

A map of Cameroon’s imaginatively-named provinces,
highlighting those that were formerly British-ruled and consider themselves a separate country.

The larger region of which Bakassi is now a part—so-called Ambazonia or Ambazania—was the part of Germany’s colony Kamerun that was subdivided in 1918 between the British and the French as First World War spoils.  The francophone part eventually became independent of France as Cameroon (Cameroun, in French) in 1961, while a plebiscite was held to determine the fate of the British portion—two territories called Southern Cameroons and Northern Cameroons.  Southern Cameroons, though English-speaking, was attached to the French-dominated, newly independent Cameroon, while Northern Cameroons became part of Nigeria, the eastern edge of today’s Middle Belt region.  In 1972, a new Cameroonian constitution extended Francophone central-government control, exacerbating separatism in the former Southern Cameroons.  In 1999, the Southern Cameroons National Council (S.C.N.C.) declared, mostly symbolically, an independent Republic of Ambazonia, citing a 1995 non-binding referendum on independence in which separatists won out with 99%, and in 2006, after the Bakassi cession, the Southern Cameroons Peoples Organization (SCAPO) declared a rival Republic of Ambazania (note slight difference in spelling), which included Bakassi as well.

Neither movement ever controlled any territory or won much support abroad, but activists such as Gorgi-Dinka continue to press their case.  The restriction of the Ambazonian claim to the tiny Bakassi Peninsula, however, seems to be a new wrinkle.

There might be a logic to this.  It may be that mainland Ambazonians, who are more cosmopolitan, are more keen on integrating peacefully into Cameroon.  Bakassians, though—members of the Efike or Efik ethnic group, some of whom have been agitating quietly for several years now for a separate Republic of Bakassi—have linguistic, cultural, and historical affinities with the Ogoni, Ijaw, and other peoples of the Niger Delta region over the border in Nigeria.  Both areas were part of the Calabar (a.k.a. Kalabar) Kingdom, which became part of the British Empire in 1884 (see map above).  Many Bakassians, less so than mainlanders in southwestern Cameroon, consider themselves tied to Calabar, which still operates as a largely ceremonial kingdom on the Nigerian side of the border.  The Ogoni, in their battle with international oil companies, have been among the most strident separatists in Nigeria in recent history, and their cause was brought to prominence by the state-sponsored murder, in 1995, of their most prominent activist, the novelist Ken Saro-Wiwa.  With an Islamist insurgency in the north led by Boko Haram, and worries about a resurgence of Yoruba and Igbo (Biafran) nationalism as well, Nigeria is at a centrifugal point in its history.  Perhaps Gorji-Dinka and other Ambazonian nationalists are hoping that that is a regional trend they can work with and build on.

A Calabarian coronation

[Related articles: “Remembering Odumegwu Ojukwu: On Biafra and on an African Continent Riven by European Borders” (Nov. 2011), “Mali Becomes the Latest African Country to Split along North–South Lines” (Feb. 2012), “Jihadists Imperil Nigerian Unity” (June 2012).]

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with my 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.  The book, which contains dozens of maps and over 500 flags, is now in the layout phase and should be on shelves, and available on Amazon, by early fall 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even though you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook.]