Earlyface

Сitizens of Danare and Biajua communities of
Boki Local Government Area in Cross River State
are raising the alarm over the ceding of their oil
rich communities to Cameroon.
The fact is that eight local government areas can be
ceded to Cameroon if the demarcation of Nigeria-
Cameroon boundary is done without recourse to
locating pillar 113A by representatives of Cameroon /
Nigeria Mixed Commission.
Citizens of Danare and Biajua have sent a petition to
the state governor, Senator Liyel Imoke alleging that
new boundaries are being created by some of the
surveyors charged with the responsibility of
providing correct boundaries in communities
bordering Nigeria and Cameroon.
They said: “As the people could not locate 113A and
114 A, Nigeria will suffer loss of not only thousands
of kilometres of cash crop farms, more than 20
Nigerian communities will be ceded to Cameroon. In
the history of the border between Nigeria and
Cameroon, Danare 1 is a Nigerian community at the
border between Nigeria and Cameroon “.
But Mr. Atta Ochinke who is the State’s
Commissioner for Justice and Attorney rejects this
fact saying that Nigeria or Cameroon will not lose any
territory.
“The demarcation that is going on there is to re-
establish the Anglo German boundary line which the
World Court adopted as the boundary between
Nigeria and Cameroon. It is not a new line and it is
not cutting any territory of Nigeria into Cameroon.
The action is not demarcating any new territory, but
re-establishing a boundary line that has existed for
over a hundred years.”
He adds that the communities are expressing anxiety
because these are communities that are virtually
right on the boundary line. Besides, Ochinke notes
that both communities on the Nigerian and
Cameroon sides are actually one community, one
people and they have very little respect to the
boundary line in the way they live their lives.
Speaking on behalf of the Boki people, a Community
Leader in Danare and former member representing
Boki 1 in the State House of Assembly, Mr. Cletus
Obun said:
“For Owan-Enoh the representative of Etung / Obubra
in the Federal House of Representatives and the
Attorney General and Surveyor General of the
Federation to say that there is no dispute is
treasonable. It is my take that the Surveyor General
of the Federation should be tried for treason”.
He presses the point that pillars are meant to
indicate geographic features and must not be used as
a boundary line.
“If the Nigerian government does not stop its officials
like this Surveyor General who are making unguided
comments about the judgement they seem not to
understand or are bent on misinterpreting, we will
lose not just Bakassi but two oil wells. Nigerians in
that area (Danare / Biajua) will resist this and will
prepare to declare a republic of its own under extant
international treaty to which Nigeria is a signatory.
There are several declarations by the United Nations
that make it possible for us and since Nigeria is bent
on giving us to Cameroon and we do not want to
become Cameroonians, we are free under extant UN
declarations to proclaim a sovereign country of our
own and that is the ‘Ambasonia Republic’.