Bakassi: Or the Politics of Exclusion and Occupation?

Fongot Kini-Yen

Description

This is a complex volume that combines a good deal of survey data on Bakassi and its populations with more ethnographically based insights into the conditions of the Bakassi communities. The book is the outcome of research carried out by Fongot Kini between 2004 and 2009. The work is intended to serve as first hand exhaustive information on the live situation in the contested Bakassi Cameroon-Nigeria border region. The term Bakassi engenders multiple meanings loaded with many conflicting emotional, spiritual and material interests. Native inhabitants are systematically disinherited of their ancestral cultural heritage and socio-economic resources. They are bastardised, humiliated and scammed by unscrupulous opportunists who deliberately misidentify them with intentions of dispossessing them of their ancestral lands and natural resources. Overall the author is in sympathy with the Bakassi who he argues have been marginalised and neglected by the Cameroon state. In particular, the value of the indigenous communities in terms of local economies as well as securing this vital border area has not been recognised and various external groups have been either allowed or encouraged to settle there to both the detriment of local populations and to the security of the region.

Sujets

• Sociology

Informations

• Publié par: Langaa RPCIG
• Date de parution: 15 mai 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9789956790319
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 23 Mo

Extrait

BAKASSI:

Bakassi Or The Politics of Exclusion and Occupation? Fongot Kini-Yen Kinni

L a ng a a R esea rch & P u blishing CIG Mankon, Bamenda

Publisher: LangaaRPCIG Langaa Research & Publishing Common Initiative Group P.O. Box 902 Mankon Bamenda North West Region Cameroon [e-mail] www.langaa-rpcig.net Distributed in and outside N. America by African Books Collective [e-mail] www.africanbookcollective.com

ISBN: 9956-790-29-X ©Fongot Kini-Yen Kinni 2013

DISCLAIMER All views expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Langaa RPCIG.

Dedication To my sons Kenny and Sammy

Table of Contents Foreword...................................................................................................v About the Author.................................................................................... vii Acknowledgement................................................................................... xi Abbreviations........................................................................................... xiii Chapter 1 Backgrounding Bakassi Post-Conflict Confidence-Building and Peace- Building Strategies................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2 The Bakassi Geo-Strategic Space.......................................................... 49 Chapter 3 Colonial Impact on the Bakassi Region............................................... 71 Chapter 4 Bakassi Colonial Agent Based System Conflicts…............................ 93 Chapter 5 The Bakassi Identity Problem: Who Is Bakassian And Who Is Not?............................................................................................. 131 Chapter 6 Demographic and Socio-Economic Overview Including Peoples and Languages of Bakassi and Social Interaction.......................................145 Chapter 7 Maritime Traffic and Road Network and Trade in the Ndian Mainland and the Bakassi Peninsula.......................................................................193 Chapter 8 Corporate Social Responsibility and Peace-Building Process in the Bakassi Peninsula..................................................................................... 213 iii

Chapter 9 Water and Sanitation, Health Facilities, Education, Social Infrastructure and Services.....................................................................255 Chapter 10 Socio-Economic Profile of the Bakassi Region.................................. 281 Chapter 11 Negotiating Contiguities in the Agent Based Directed System in the Bakassi Post-Conflict Political Economic Space................................ 331 Chapter 12 Bakassi Confidence-Building and Peace-Building Action Plan for the Rehabilitation of Bakassi........................................................................ 357 Special Events of the Bakassi Peninsula and Correlated Dates.........................................................................................................401 Bibliography...........................................................................................405 Judgment.................................................................................................413 Agreement between the Republic Of Cameroon and the Federal Republic of Nigeria Concerning the Modalities of Withdrawal in the Bakassi Peninsula Annex I

iv

Foreword

This work is the outcome of a Political Cultural and Legal Anthropological Research as well as Socio-Economic Research carried out by the author between 2004 and 2009 in the Bakassi Region on the impact of the Bakassi conflict and post-conflict confidence-building and peace-building logistics and strategies for the rehabilitation of Bakassi and its victims. The usage of the term Bakassi in this research includes the Bakassi peninsula region proper and its contiguous extensions as far as the Sea port of Idenau in the Fako Division extending to the large fishing village of Bekumu to Bamusso and their environs; as well as the coastal fishing villages of the Ndian Division to Ekondo Titi, Musongiselli, Isangele, Rio del Rey and Akwa/Achibong, Atabong (Idabato) East and West and Jabane I and II (see Map 1). The work is intended to serve as first hand exhaustive information on the true live situation in Bakassi today derived from the personal experience on the field by the author. These data were systematically collected during the course of the years of very keen intensive field work and a lot of investigative tact and strict documentation. The term Bakassi engenders many meanings loaded with many conflicting emotional, spiritual and material interests to the various stakeholders, actors and agents. Those actively involved in these new ideographic and parachronic representations of Bakassi, do not seem to care much about the enriching diachronic historiography of the native peoples who have been transformed into victims of this confusing synchronic superficial interpretations that are given by the new stakeholders. Hence this once abandoned space has suddenly become the arena for spawning the new myth of appropriation and occupation, which is being auctioned on the world political culture flip chart and international socio-economic crude oil and fishing stock markets. And so while the cosy talking shops are being celebrated by the brilliant political marketing information technology agents and experts, the oil companies and the fishing trawlers are getting stingingly rich on a daily basis.

v

Meanwhile the Bakassi natives are systematically disinherited of their ancestral cultural heritage and socio-economic space of their sustainable livelihood by the new occupants made up not just of the oil companies and the industrial fishing trawlers, but also of the economic scammers who put on the false masquerades to dance in the name of the Bakassi native people who have been rendered voiceless in their own motherland. This is the reason why this book is intended to serve firstly, as a policy research and a policy evaluation document to activate advocacy and give voice to the voiceless; and secondly as a critical historiographic cultural anthropological material for researchers, students, policy makers, government officials, economic stakeholders and international investors, who would like to get the truth about the Bakassi native people. The Bakassi natives are not only being bastardised and humiliated but also scammed by unscrupulous Cameroonians who identify them as non-Cameroonians with the intention of gradually occupying their ancestral lands and rendering them homeless and voiceless; and deprive them of the natural resources of their sustainable livelihood. This is the time for the Cameroon Government to sit up and live up to its corporate social responsibility of good governance prescriptions before it is too late before the dehumanising situation and of recurrent human rights abuses of the native Bakassi peoples degenerate into a new conflict.

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About the Author

Fongot Kini-Yen Kinni is also the Director of the African Art and Handicraft Environmental Management Institute – AFHEMI KINI FOUNDATION – and Curator of the AFHEMI KINI FOUNDATION MUSEUM. The AFHEMI KINI FOUNDATION is an international NGO registered officially by the Cameroon Ministry of Territorial Administration in 1997. This NGO has evolved into various sub-agencies like the AFHEMI 4E-Consultancy whose principal objectives are Environmental Education and Preservation, Environmental Enhancement, Eco-Tourism Promotion and Cultural Research and Enhancement, Entertainment and Hospitality Management. The AFHEMI KINI FOUNDATION MUSEUM which was founded in 1990 and officially inaugurated and opened to the public on th 20 October 1999 by the Cameroon Ministry of Culture has been playing these various roles through the visual anthropological and performing arts support systems put at the disposal of the Cameroonian and international public. The AFHEMI NGO through the AFHEMI 4E-CONSULTANCY and MUSEUM, have been working tirelessly for the sensitisation and education of the public on the skills and techniques of managing and enhancing the growth and preservation of the natural and socio-cultural environment for the on- going sustainable management of the natural and cultural heritage of the various ethnicities of Cameroon and Africa. It has engaged in various environmental and cultural researches and workshops on the peoples of Cameroon and Africa since its foundation. The study on Bakassi is just one of the many cultural and environmental researches carried on in various parts of Cameroon since 1990 till date. Fongot Kini-Yen Kinni is able to delve into and handle many aspects of the social and human sciences because of his rich and brilliant academic background. He was nicknamed the professional- student by his peers because of his avid reading ability and quest for knowledge. He earned B.A and M.A. degrees in Philosophy and Theology from the Pontifical Urbanian University of Rome, a Higher and a Post Graduate Diploma in the Social Sciences from the vii