It is no news now that the D-Day of the handing over of Bakassi to Cameroon, a day that cannot wait or be changed because the government wanted to give a false impression of the image of the country to some foreign countries and organizations, in the name of wanting a seat at the United Nations Security Council, has come and gone, but it must be known that this day did not just pass Nigeria and Nigerians by without leaving some indelible mark. The indelibility of the mark, without doubt, will reside more in the people of Bakassi who today have become refugees in their home land. Many of the Bakassi people will never forget how their ancestral home was stolen away from them by the Nigerian government, that started the infamous mission by the then President Olusegun Obasanjo, and he handed it over to his 'house-boy', who is the current President, Musa Yar'Adua, to complete. The Bakassi people will not also forget how the government and the people of Nigeria, with whom they claim to share a common nationhood with let them down; giving the Bakassi people the feeling that they are all on their own since their own part of the country was not included in the shameful deed of the government. Some, if not many, of the Bakassi people now displaced would have wished that the whole Biafra saga had come true, if only to save them from the shame and suffering they will have to keep up with in a country they call their own for a long time to come.
But the shame and sufferings of the Bakassi people are only more vivid and elaborate marks of what has characterisized the greater majority of Nigerians ever since the inception of the Yar'Adua led government because they have all along been deceived by him that he comes with a better options for the people of Nigeria; these options he raped up in two terms: RULE OF LAW and THE DUE PROCESS. These are two very good workable terms that any well meaning government should adopt, but the effectiveness of these terms rest completely on the individual who applies them.
President Yar'Adua has shown through the Bakassi experience that he cannot be counted among those noble men in whose ranks are found the decent qualities of the rule of law and due process. The rule of law simply put is the fact that no one is above the law, including the maker of the law; everything is subject to the law. If that is the case, where is it in the Nigerian law that it is in the place of the President's office to sign out a part of the country to another country? Certainly it is not within the President's office and power to do such a thing with regards to the constitution of Nigeria. But then it could be argued that President Yar'Adua was not the architect of the action of handing Bakassi over to Cameroun , instead he only inherited it from the past administration. This of course is very correction, but then since he claims to be a championer of the due process, which when simply put means that everything must be done or carried out by some specifically defined process backed by the laws that be, it would then have been in his place to find out if the so called Green Tree Accord came as a result of the due process that it ought to have followed. From the look of things on the Bakassi hand-over, this was never done.
That Yar'Adua did not try to find out if this so-called accord or agreement went through the right process or not, or he did try to find out, and then concluded that even if the agreement did not go through the right process that it was on his part to abide by it so as to put up a good image before the international bodies, then he simply makes a fool of what he claims to be championing, that is, the rule of law and the due process; and if this is the case then his vanguard for rule of law and the due process stinks so very much. The simple meaning of this action of handing over Bakassi to Cameroun is, if it is by any means determined that the signing of the Green Tree Accord by Obasanjo, the President at the time the accord was signed, did not follow the due process and it went against the constitutional provisions as it is in the Nigerian constitution with regards to signing of treaties or agreement for the country, then it means that Obasanjo broke the laws of the nation, and by that simple definition he committed a crime (for crime is defined as an illegal act), and so he is a criminal (for criminal is defined as a person who has committed a crime). If Obasanjo is certified as a criminal for the fact that he signed the Green Tree Accord which is found wanting in the ambient of the rule of law and due process then he must be treated as a criminal to the full weight of the laws of Nigeria. But Obasanjo must not stand alone in this because he handed over to Yar'Adua, and Yar'Adua sure does know that ignorance of the law is not an excuse to the law. Being a champion of the rule of law and the due process, Yar'Adua ought to have taken his time to look into all that is handed over to him to determine which things are to be accepted by him or which things are to be reverted to the due process and rule of law which they lacked before accepting them; for by accepting them also means that he accepted any consequences that may result from any of the things handed over to him. In this vein then, if Obasanjo can be acclaimed a criminal with regard his committing a crime of breaking the law and not following the due process as contain in the Nigerian constitution to the signing of the Green Tree Accord for the country, then Yar'Adua becomes an accomplice in the matter since he accepted the accord as handed over to him and then went on to impliment it; by this then Yar'Adua is guilty of a crime and that make him a criminal, and he should be made to face the law.
The law must be obeyed at all cost was the banner, so to speak, that Yar' Adua flagged off his administration with, and because of this he had to revoke some contracts that were awarded during the time of the past regime, with the claim that they never went through the due process before they were awarded. In so far as there can be an example of his administration rejecting some thing handed over to him from the previous administration because it was lacking in quality when placed side by side with the rule of law and the due process then his administration is equally bound to reject and rectify the Green Tree Accord or Agreement because it lacked the qualities of the rule of law and the due process. That Yar' Adua did not have the courage to reject the accord and to rectify it in line with his mantra of the rule of law and the due process makes he a weak leader, and an insincere advocate of the rule of law and the due process.
If Yar' Adua was sincere with the Green Tree Accord, he would have been able to appeal to the Security Council, showing the lapses that characterized the signing of the accord, and he would have been given a fair hearing since the International community know that the country is trying to find her feet, undoing the wrongs of many of the past leaders. The International community would have understood this because even as of now they are helping Nigeria to get back a lot of her funds looted by many of her past leaders. Why then will it not be thought that the International community will want to give Nigeria another chance of getting things in the right place before re-presenting this case on Bakassi?
The Bakassi issue has opened up President Yar' Adua as an educated person yet very unintelligent. He is unintelligent because his administration is standing on shaky grounds, his productivity rating as a President is very low, a good number of Nigerians are beginning to question the Federal character nomenclature of his cabinet selection, the High Court in Abuja had given him a clear chance to buy some time to clear things up about the Bakassi issue so as to see clearer what action to take (which could end up being the handing over of Bakassi), the Senators were still lobbying on ratifying or not ratifying the treaty in keeping with the constitution of the country, etc. Yar' Adua had all these before him, and if he had played to any of them, the International community would not have lost their identity as the International community, instead they would have understood the delicacy of the matter and would have allowed him some more time to be able to sort things out properly in the country before going on to hand over the area, since it was not that he was the one not willing to hand over Bakassi. Yar' Adua is just a sheepish leader who is not able to read the signs of time to know the things that play to his advantage and those that do not; and then rather sadly he chose those things that do not play to their advantage.
His advantage does not lie in the International community saying that he is a good man because he kept to the signed treaty, no way! that is all international politics. Of course it is international politics because the nations that helped to see that the treaty is signed will use that to boost their imagine in the presence of the International community, and they will get credit for it, not minding if that will be of any benefit to the country or not; they have used Nigeria as a spring board to get closer to the very top. Nigeria will now have to live with what they have done to her, thanks to the unintelligence of President Yar' Adua. But this same Yar' Adua must not forget that 'a child who says that his mother will not sleep, will also not have any sleep'. He has murdered sleep and so will not be able to find it again. How can he think that Bakassi will be at peace? What is happening in Gaza? The people there are ready to give up their lives because they feel that their homeland has been taken away from them. Yar' Adua has forgotten that there is no place like home, and that it is only that place that is called home that a man is ready to give up his life fighting to protect because that is were he is assured of his full rights as a human being. The Bakassi people will go back home, because no matter how good the new place is, they remain strangers there, and the original people of that place will always remind them that they are strangers; this then means that there are two time booms waiting to explode: one will be with the settling Bakassi people against the original people of the place they have been forced to go and settle, and the second will be against the Cameroonians who they will go to fight in other to reclaim their homeland. When that will start, the same International community will call on the government to curb those fighting the Cameroonians but that will be very difficult, and then Cameroon will be forced to attack Nigeria; the end of the story is already known, but all thanks to the unintelligence of President Yar' Adua and his mantra of the rule of law and the due process that stink so very much.
But how can Yar' Adua be so naïve to believe all the things in the accord? It is said that Bakassi people who want to remain in Bakassi are free to do so because they are covered by the accord which states that they can remain in Bakassi under Cameroonian rule with their full identity as Nigerians and they are free to carry on their lives without any form of harassment from the Cameroonian government. This is stupid! It is equal to saying that there should exist a country in another country. Anyway the result is already out because news has it that the Cameroonians have closed their boarders on the Bakassi side, not allowing Nigerians there to cross over to the Nigerians side and not allowing Nigerians to enter the peninsula, and even with the threat from the Cameroonian soldiers to shoot at sight any Nigeria found around the area. Where is the International Court of Justice to check what Cameroon is now doing there? Where is the International community? Where is the United Nation Secretary General who hailed Nigeria for loosing a part of her land and people? Where are they all now? They have all gone home and are at peace for getting the job well done but then Yar' Adua has to bear all this because he allowed himself to be used, and because he wants Nigeria to get a seat at the UN Security Council; what a joke, Nigeria wants to get into the Security Council when there is no security in the country (when will these Nigerian leaders stop fooling themselves?). And besides who are the ones who can be appointed to represent the country in the Security Council, that is if Nigeria ever gets there anyway? They will be the same cohort messing up things in Nigeria now, and many of them are already counting how much they will be making in dollars and Euros when they get there.
Bakassi was treaded away because of the crazy want of a seat at the Security Council but Yar' Adua deceived Nigerians that he was being loyal to his segregative rule of law and the due process. Come to think of it, how many continental and inter-continental bodies does Nigeria belong to? The answer is: Nigeria belongs to so many that she may have even lost count of how many they are. Yet with belonging to so many continental and inter-continental bodies the country is not better off; the rate of poverty in Nigeria has broken every world record that can ever be, and it is even going further to creating more world records. Yar' Adua should stop deceiving Nigerians with this his so called rule of law and the due process mantra; he just put these forward to distract Nigerians from seeing the real things he is doing. Yar' Adua is preaching the rule of law and the due process yet there was no rule of law and the due process to seeing that the N20 billion needed for the resettlement of the displaced Bakassi people was released and used to build up their residence before driving them out of the Bakassi peninsula. Up till date just about N5 billion have been released, thereby leaving the people to face unimaginable hardship. Now Nigerians will see what kind of rule of law and the due process that will be followed to changing the constitution so as to eliminate Bakassi peninsula from being a part of the country. Yar' Adua is a liar, lying about the rule of law and the due process, because when it really came to the time for him to live up to the rule of law and the due process that he is championing he failed completely, what a shame to the Presidency; Nigeria has a President who cannot live up to his words.
Fr. Julius Ijekeye lives and studies in Rome, Italy