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Friday, August 16, 2013
It has been five years in the making but Cameroon has finally taken full sovereignty over the Bakassi peninsula. The peninsula was ceded by Nigeria in 2008 after an International Court of Justice ruling, ending years of border skirmishes between the two countries.
2013 brought an end to the five-year UN-backed transition period. This period exempted residents in the area, many of them Nigerian fishermen, from paying tax, but now the Nigerians must apply for residency permit or take on Cameroonian citizenship if they choose to remain in their homes and pay taxes. There are roughly 300,000 people who live in the Bakassi peninsula, with about 90% of those being Nigerian.
Most of those who have left Cameroon are living in camps in Nigeria’s Cross River state, where they have been critical of the authorities for not doing enough to resettle them a BBC report said.
The peninsula is often touted as being “oil rich” which understandably makes it a bone of contention between Cameroon and Nigeria although no real exploration has taken place there so there is no telling whether the tag “oil rich” is in fact correct.
A portion of the peninsula has been gazzetted for exploration, but to date oil companies have not jumped into any deals.
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