INSIGHT

End of Cameroon-Nigeria Boundary Dispute in Sight

Some 3,000 pillars are being planted to demarcate the border between Cameroon and Nigeria.  The U.N.-sponsored project will end next year.

The representative of the U.N. Secretary General for West Africa and chairman of the Cameroon-Nigeria Mixed Commission Said Djinnit is overseeing the project.  He says the placement of the markers is a significant milestone in achieving lasting peace between the neighbors.

According Djinnit it is a border, which is meant to bring people together, not to separate them.  He says it gives people an opportunity to work freely within a context of clear borders that will prevent further disputes so that all the energies, resources of the two countries [are] channeled towards addressing the real socioeconomic problems of the people.

The $12 million (U.S.) needed for the pillars comes from a U.N. Trust Fund.  Cameroon and Nigeria are each contributing three million U.S. dollars, with Britain and the European Commission providing the rest. 

Technical experts are using motorbikes and canoes and are trekking over mountains and through thick forests to trace the over 2000-km boundary from Lake Chad to the Gulf of Guinea.  They say the undertaking is tedious but are optimistic their work will end next year.

The boundary demarcation is the last step in the U.N.-backed process to end border tension between Cameroon and Nigeria. Much of it centered on the ownership of the oil- and fish-rich Bakassi peninsula that juts into the Gulf of Guinea.  The situation escalated into military confrontation in 1993, when Nigerian troops invaded and occupied it.

A year later, Cameroon asked the International Court of Justice to arbitrate. In 2002, the court gave sovereignty over Bakassi to Cameroon.  Villages straddling the border were to be shared between both countries, but Nigeria initially rejected the verdict. 

The U.N. intervened, urging both countries to respect the ruling.  It set up the Cameroon-Nigeria Mixed Commission to follow up on implementation of the judgment. Nevertheless, progress remained slow.  

In 2006, Koffi Annan summoned President Paul Biya of Cameroon and his then Nigerian counterpart, Olusegun Obasanjo, to a summit at Greentree in New York, where Nigeria agreed to respect the World Court verdict. 

The Mixed Commission was charged with speeding up the land and maritime boundary demarcation. The agreement also reiterated the demilitarization of occupied territories and the transfer of administrative authority, protection of the rights of affected populations and promotion of joint economic ventures and cross-border cooperation.

Experts say the process is a model of preventive diplomacy and a new approach for peaceful settlement of border disputes.

Donors are also encouraging both to pursue cross-border cooperation in oil, gas and palm oil production.  The African Development Bank is providing $155 million (U.S.) for the construction of a multinational highway to boost trade between the neighbors, and trade fairs are being organized, alternating between Cameroon and Nigeria.

The military forces of the two countries are holding joint training, and they are considering joint patrols in the Gulf of Guinea to discourage piracy.

Saddig Marafat Diggi who led a Nigerian delegation to a recent session of the Mixed Commission in Cameroon’s capital, Yaound, salutes the progress being made.

Diggi says, “I’m going home as a happy man -- happy in the sense that Cameroon has now agreed that [it’s] going to sign the document on confidence-building. That is the one concerning the [proposed highway]. I’m also going home to sensitize our local population concerning the pillar construction to tell them that the demarcation is not meant to divide us. It’s just a necessity so that we can know [where Cameroon ends and Nigeria begins].”

However, Nigerians doing business across the border still complain of harassment and extortion at the hands of Cameroonian gendarmes.  In Bakassi, the predominantly Nigerian population says its rights are not being fully protected.

However, the Cameroon government is taking measures to address those concerns, beginning with the sacking of several corrupt law enforcement officers.

Ivorian Elections Stalled Over Unverified Voting List Palaver

By Fulgence Zamblé/IPS

Preparations for presidential elections scheduled for the end of February or the beginning of March - elections that have already been postponed numerous times since 2005 - have again reached an impasse in Côte d'Ivoire.

The Ivorian Presidency and the Independent Electoral Commission are at loggerheads over the verification and finalizing of the electoral list.

In a television broadcast spokesperson for the Presidency Gervais Coulibaly accused the head of the electoral commission, Robert Beugré Mambé, of having allowed as many as 429,000 illegitimate voter registrations.

Two days later, President Laurent Gbagbo's party, the Front Populaire Ivorian, called for the Mambé's resignation. (Mambé is a member of the opposition Democratic Party of Ivory Coast, known by its French acronym PDCI.)

The accusation of fraud was rejected by the IEC in a communiqué published the same day. "The president of the IEC has not, at any time, taken any action leading to the registration of people who were not subject to the correct verification procedures," wrote the commission.

On behalf of the Rassemblement des Houphouëtistes Pour la Démocratie Et la Paix, a loose alliance of four leading opposition parties, Alphonse Diédié Mady of the PDCI, asserted that the affair was "a delaying tactic of the (ruling) Front Populaire Ivorian. This demonstrates a desire in the president's camp not to go to the polls".

The alliance said it is considering calling for protests. "It is too bad that a fresh crisis has appeared at this time," says political observer Maurice Zagol. He says recent events dash fresh hope for the elections as the new year began, pointing to positive statements from several politicians at the end of 2009, and the drafting of plan for disarmament and demobilization of former rebels in four cities across the country.

In 2002, Côte d'Ivoire was divided in two by an armed rebellion aimed at ending the perceived marginalization of people from the north of the country. After several false starts, a peace accord brought that conflict to an end in March 2007.

Five thousand of former rebel combatants are to be integrated into a future army, and 400 commissioned and non-commissioned officers who joined the rebellion will see their ranks brought up to par with their comrades who remained in the army loyal to the government during the civil war. The finalization of the hotly-contested electoral list was meant to be concluded in January, but it was postponed following two weeks of strikes by administrative clerks in December. The clerks' demanded payment of several months of arrears on their salaries before resuming work, which crucially includes the issuing of documents needed for people applying to be added to the voters' list.

Of six million potential voters, around four million registrations were retained without question. Nearly two million were rejected - no records for a quarter of these people were found in any of the national records used for verification.

"My name's on the provisional electronic list. But when a hard copy of the list was posted, my registration didn't appear," says Madeleine Bougouhi, a resident of the Yopougon neighborhood in Abidjan's northeast. "I'm still waiting to get my case looked at."

Moussa Bakayoko says that his name was omitted for unknown reasons. "My whole family is on the electoral list and I am the only one whose name is missing," he said, while acknowledging that he had changed his birth certificate to reduce his age.

Bakayoko's modified documents illustrate one of the underlying problems. "These cases are now the biggest part of the problem confronting the process of verifying the electoral list. There are duplicate records. People had to do it (modify their documents) - whether to find a job, using the birth certificate of a younger sibling, whether deciding to reduce their age in order to work longer in the civil service," explains Donatien Kacou, IEC agent.

All the ingredients are now in place for the elections to be postponed again, Zagol told IPS. "There is now an obvious loss of confidence between the different parties and it seems unlikely this breach can be easily plugged, without major upheavals at the heart of the agency organizing the elections as the President's camp wishes."

Please share your views with our Editors via e-mail: