Asaba — Diplomacy is essentially about engineering a negotiated agreement by addressing the interests of the parties in a dispute with tact and subtlety. It is not about docility or meekness but the deployment of the language fairness in mediating sensitive issues. A counterpoise to diplomacy would be the application of brute force on the principle that ‘might is right.’ That often leads to war however, which is universally considered unconscionable. It appears that Nigeria failed to fight for her rights in the bid to be our Cameroonian brothers’ keeper.
In a world where bargains and trade-offs from negotiated agreements drive international relations, the recent agreement between President Olusegun Obassanjo of Nigeria and Paul Biya of Cameroon requiring Nigeria to hand over the oil-rich Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon appears to have achieved the opposite of what negotiated agreements are meant to accomplish, namely, leaving both parties in a conflict with a win-win feeling. Unless there is something Nigerians are not being told, such as a secret bargain to appoint the country as Africa’s permanent representative at the United Nations Security Council, Nigeria seems to have ceded Bakassi without any return, which is patently unfair. Nigerians, especially the people of Bakassi whose interest appears to have been compromised, have mourned their loss ever since the agreement was announced while Cameroonians have rejoiced at the fulfillment of their dream.
According to experts in international negotiations, an agreement that does not serve the basic interests of both parties in a conflict would be difficult if not impossible to implement. From 1978 when the tussle over the ownership of the Bakassi peninsula first erupted during the tenure of General Obasanjo as military head of state, through Alhaji Shehu Shagari’s tenure as head of state to the present day, Nigerian leaders have had to choose between war and diplomacy to resolve the Bakassi question. Africa having been proclaimed the centrepiece of the nation’s foreign policy, Nigerian leaders have chosen diplomacy rather than waging war against Cameron, a sister African nation-state.
Diplomacy is essentially about engineering a negotiated agreement by addressing the interests of the parties in a dispute with tact and subtlety. It is not about docility or meekness but the deployment of the language fairness in mediating sensitive issues. A counterpoise to diplomacy would be the application of brute force on the principle that ‘might is right.’ That often leads to war however, which is universally considered unconscionable. It appears that Nigeria failed to fight for her rights in the bid to be our Cameroonian brothers’ keeper. An outline of Nigeria’s interests in Bakassi is would help at this juncture to put the matter in perspective. First of all, thousands of Nigerians live on the Bakassi peninsula. Secondly, the territory has been under Nigeria’s effective occupation and administration since we attained independence in 1960, and possession is ninety percent equity in law. Thirdly, and perhaps most important of all, the Bakassi peninsula has a large depo sit of oil, a commodity that heretics refer to as the ‘universal deity’ worshiped by Christians in Europe and the Americas, Muslims in the Middle East, atheists in Russia and China, and animists in Africa. Some pundits have even narrowed down the violence that currently ravages the world to a terrorism driven by al-Oaeda’s global network whose militants would shun no crime, however dastardly, in the bid to expel Western countries (notably US, UK and France) from Arabia and deny them the privilege exploiting the world’s largest reserve of fossil fuel (crude oil and gas). Be al-Qaeda’s agenda as it may, the fact remains that the dispute between Nigeria, which effectively possesses the oil-rich Bakassi peninsula, and the Cameroon, which claims to own it, is about access to oil and gas. Given the seemingly insatiable thirst of the economies of US, China and India for ‘liquid gold’ (as crude oil is sometimes called), some have described oil and gas as the ‘deity’ of rich countrie s, with apologies to Karl Marx, the German philosopher who described religion as ‘the opium of the masses.’
In their book titled, Getting to Yes: Negotiating an Agreement Without Giving In, Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Paton of the Harvard Negotiation Project identified the three basic methods of negotiation as soft, hard, and principled. Nigeria appears to have adopted the soft stance in her negotiation with Cameroon, which perceives the negotiators as friends and the goal of the negotiation as agreement. Nigeria ought to have entered the negotiation as a principled problem solver whose objective is reaching a wise and favourable outcome efficiently and amicably. Owing her soft approach, Nigeria made undue concessions just to cultivate relationship and ended up conceding the oil wealth of Bakassi to avoid a contest of wills – reportedly because of pressure from the United Nations, which in turn was manipulated by Cameroon and her ex-colonial master, France, said to be waiting anxiously to commence the exploration of the oil in Bakassi.
The Nigerian government’s excuse for quickly complying with the ruling of the World Court was its desire to ‘uphold the rule of law and be a good global citizen.’ That would be fair enough if only the same government did not have such a bad reputation for flagrantly violating domestic court pronouncements. Both the Nigerian judiciary and opposition parties have often accused it of blatant respect of judicial decisions that do not serve its selfish interest.
In contrast to Nigeria, the US government holds the country’s constitution to be sacrosanct and protects its provisions from desecration whatever the circumstances. President Richard Nixon was compelled to resign from his office on account of the constitutional breach that snowballed into the infamous Watergate scandal. President Jimmy Carter failed to make it back to office following the Irangate scandal in which he was alleged to have violated the US constitution by dealing with the Iranian Islamic regime that sacked the US Embassy in Tehran. President Bill Clinton’s political misfortune is still fresh in our minds. He was impeached over a constitutional breach by the US Congress, but escaped the hammer of the US Senate.
Unlike Nigeria, the United States chooses the international laws and conventions it respects. A typical example is the International Court at The Hague, before which Cameroon filed its case against Nigeria. USA objects to subjecting its military forces to the World Court’s jurisdiction. US servicemen across the world often run foul of their host countries’ laws and the US fears a loss of face if they were to be arraigned at the International Court, found guilty, and imprisoned. The Kyoto Agreement on Global Warming/Climate Change, which the USA, Russia and China, the greatest polluters, refused to sign, is another example. Add to that the human rights abuses allegedly committed in US detention centres in Guantanamo (Cuba) and Abu Ghraib (Iraq), as well as the infamous US ‘rendition’ or out-sourcing of torture by its security agencies and you would have a good picture of how the complex game of international politics is propelled by national pride and self-interest. Regrettabl y however Nigeria seems to dabble into international politics with her eyes closed and arms tied. Perhaps Africa’s elevation as the centrepiece of Nigeria’s foreign policy is to blame, since it burdens Nigeria with playing the role of Africa’s ‘big brother’ without the corresponding benefits.
Back in the 1980s when South Africa, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissao, Sao Tome and Principe, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Namibia were under the shackles of colonial rule, Nigeria became involved in their struggle for independence as a quasi-frontline states and directly confronted a number of global powers in the process such as Britain, US, the apartheid regime of South Africa, and Portugal. Declaring herself a non-aligned country, Nigeria nationalised British Petroleum, Barclay’s Bank and other Western interests in the country and suffered several ‘collateral damages’ as a consequence. One instance was the debt overhang that bugged down the economy (and the people by extension) and allowed countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, which were nearly at par with Nigeria thirty years ago, to surge ahead.
Oyibe, Commissioner for Special Duties, Government House, Delta State, wrote from Asaba.